Good morning, all! The laundry is down the street, I'm not going in to Toyland today, and I have a date with our DR Jose at 3:15 to see Skip Kennon's new one-act musical. I am looking forward to it.
Last night, DR CharlesEdwardPogue wrote:
Elmore, how about no movies at all turned into musicals for a good long while.
That's a hard one for me because I believe two things: 1. you should only musicalize something you think you can improve and most boobs pick something successful and screw it up and 2. THE PRODUCERS as a musical is better than the movie.
That said, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN reflects my first thoughts: a perfect black and white comedy homage turned into a technicolor mess with a cast second-rate to its original. Why see it for $100+ when you can buy a decent copy of the original fim for $20 or so?
Last night, our DR Jose wrote:
Are there any sort of records regarding how the public - and the writers - felt back in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries felt about plays and stories being adapted into operas and scenas?
I mean... If Beaumarchais and Dumas and Shakespeare(!) had not allowed their stories and plays to be adapted, turned and transformed into operas, just think of the great works of Art we would have been deprived of. "The Barber of Seville", "The Marriage of Figaro", "Camille", "Romeo and Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", etc. were not "original" ideas when they were taken on by Mozart, Rossini, Puccini, Verdi, Britten and Bernstein (to name just a few).
Since copyright laws didn't exist, no one was protected. The author sold their rights to the publisher and made nothing after the sale. Both Beaumarchais comedies were turned into relatively faithful duplicates as opera, "Camille" was originally dramatized by its novelist and his play vwrsion is usually adapted into other media. I would guess that most of the plays - novels require heavier adaptation - turned into opera by Puccini, Verdi, and Britten remain close to their source; operas I can think of that greatly alter their source are CARMEN (from a novella) and TURANDOT (from a commedia dell'arte by Gozzi). In Prokofiev's ballet ROMEO & JULIET, they have to dance so there's no real balcony scene as there is in Gounod's adaptation.
Of course, there adaptations that go further afield: God knows what Shakespeare would have thought of Thomas' opera of HAMLET ending with Hamlet's being crowned King of Denmark or the 17th Century versions adapted to accommodate Cordelia's rescue and marriage to Edgar or a Purcell masque called THE FAIRY QUEEN. I suspect he'd feel similarly abused as Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Hollingshead most likely would have felt by what Shakespeare did to them.
I've seen some publicity on the operatic FLY and DR CharlesEdwardPogue is indeed mentioned in the publicity. I'm sorry he's not making anything on it, but I suppose it's cold comfort to know that Joseph Mankiewicz made nothing from APPLAUSE because ALL ABOUT EVE was owned by the studio.
