![]() Jack’s decline is gradual and poignant, rather than predetermined the ending makes moral and emotional sense, in place of the lurid nihilism of the film’s conclusion. The hotel gets its claws into us as surely as into Jack.Īgain like King’s novel, the opera boasts a coherent dramatic throughline. Yet we always feel stuck in the same nightmarish spot. The expanses of the Overlook - its grand ballrooms, industrial-size kitchen and endless hallways of locked rooms - register plainly, and the ectoplasmic echoes of long-ago guests cavort in green-screen across the balcony. Nathan Granner (left), Timothy Murray, Daniel Cilli and David Walton in “The Shining” by composer Paul Moravec and librettist Mark Campbell at Opera Parallèle. Director Brian Staufenbiel and his team of designers have created a setting that is at once spacious and constrained, full of shadowy lighting and intricate visual projections. Opera Parallèle’s visually ingenious production, staged at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, captures that air of claustrophobic menace perfectly. ![]() In King’s vision, the haunted house is actually doing the haunting - whispering into Jack’s ear, urging him to commit inexplicable mayhem against the wife and son he loves. The central result of following King’s lead is that the source of evil is the Overlook Hotel itself, rather than the satanic inner lives of Jack Nicholson’s eyebrows. Robert Wesley Mason as Jack Torrance in “The Shining” by composer Paul Moravec and librettist Mark Campbell at Opera Parallèle. Fortunately for all of us, though, this is neither the time nor the place to litigate the matter the creators of the opera have chosen sides, and all we need to do is follow them where that decision leads. I’m perfectly aware that these are fighting words, and that Kubrick has an army of devotees ready to leap to his defense at the slightest provocation. That was canny on two levels, not only because the movie is apt to be better known to audiences (and thus invite comparison) but also because the book provides the dramatic material that the film so sorely lacks. In crafting their adaptation, which was first staged by the Minnesota Opera, Moravec and Campbell took the essential first step of working from Stephen King’s intricate and sophisticated 1977 novel, rather than from director Stanley Kubrick’s flat, meandering and extravagantly pointless 1980 film. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard St., S.F. He is the recipient of the 2020 Audio Publishers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award, the 2014 National Medal of Arts, and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.‘“The Shining”:Opera Parallèle. His epic works The Dark Tower, It, Pet Sematary, Doctor Sleep, and Firestarter are the basis for major motion pictures, with It now the highest-grossing horror film of all time. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel and a television series streaming on Peacock). Stephen King is the author of more than sixty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Holly, Fairy Tale, Billy Summers, If It Bleeds, The Institute, Elevation, The Outsider, Sleeping Beauties (cowritten with his son Owen King), and the Bill Hodges trilogy: End of Watch, Finders Keepers, and Mr.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |