You thought I forgot about this series, didn’t you? Tragically, I didn’t, so welcome back to the series of blog posts where I have weird and pointless thoughts about horror, sci-fi, and dystopia in opera, or the lack thereof. Let’s continue tackling my theories as to why sci-fi, horror, and dystopia might lack in opera.
#2 continued: Regarding Horror
Last time I touched this series, I talked about how opera as a medium doesn’t match the priorities of sci-fi and dystopian literature. But what about horror? Unlike things of Star Wars’ ilk, most horror stories don’t require massive setpieces. Films like The Shining rely on a huge amount of classical music in their scores, so clearly classical music can work for horror. What gives?
I respond with another question: what makes something horrific? After all, horror is subjective. Some find body mutilation and the like horrific; others are more frightened by a person’s slow descent into madness. Even so, there are several specific techniques that people use to elicit horrified responses from audiences. Film directors use techniques like jump-scares and odd shot-composition or framing to unsettle people.
Can opera directors use the same tricks as film directors to make something horrific? Well, most operas are placed in large auditoriums with booming acoustics, so the subtleties of a cast member’s face are lost to many audience members. And although jump-scares are relatively possible in person and stage lighting works wonders, it doesn’t provide the same fine control as cinema. It’s difficult to force the audience to look at a specific place on the stage—in fact, it goes against the benefits of having a stage in the first place.
This implies that the tropes which make horror films effective don’t translate well to opera. Therefore, adapting a film to opera is probably not worth the effort. But what about a horror story, or an original script? Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw is based off a novella, while George Benjamin’s Written on Skin is loosely based off a story from The Decameron. The problem is, there aren’t many operas that follow the footsteps of these two. Even if you expand your search to musical theater, you see a couple novel adaptations (ie, Frankenstein) and almost no original scripts.
To me, this suggests that horror fans and opera creators don’t have much overlap. And that’s plausible; both groups are relatively small, and the crowd of people who actively support opera is probably smaller than either. What if composers don’t want to risk alienating their audiences by dabbling with horror? This leads me to my next point:
#3: Finances
While analyzing Rebecca Clarke’s viola sonata one day, my classmate asked, “What drove Clarke to write this piece?” The answer is simple: Clarke’s patron and friend, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, asked Clarke to write a piece for a competition featuring viola. So, she wrote it. Not because she had a burning passion for the viola, or a political statement she wanted to make through art (though those may have been secondary motivators of hers). Rebecca Clarke’s incredible viola sonata was written for the chance to win a competition and get some cash.
This is the way that a lot of composition works. Of course composers want to write certain pieces when inspiration strikes. But composers also write things because they’re commissioned to do so, or because there’s a competition to enter. And there’s little reason to write a horror, sci-fi, or dystopian opera if no one with significant funds is asking for one.
So why wouldn’t someone with money commission or hold a competition for this? I’d take a gander and point to the adaptations of Coraline as an example. Coraline is a children’s horror/adventure novella by Neil Gaiman, and it provides an excellent case study because it has been adapted as a film, musical, and opera.
“What?” you gasp. Many of us are familiar with the beautifully eerie, stop-motion film adaptation of Coraline, expertly brought to life by Studio LAIKA. But few people have heard of the other two versions, let alone experienced them. Coraline the musical premiered off-Broadway in 2009, and has only been performed at a handful of North American theaters since (the most recent performance was in 2015). Coraline the opera premiered at the Barbican Centre in London in 2018, and hasn’t been performed since that initial run. Even though it’s impossible to find the precise ticket sales for these productions, we can firmly assume that neither got even close to $124 million, a number the film’s sales succeeded during its theatrical run. And that $124+ million doesn’t even account for the sales that the film version made through the DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Suffice to say, films make more money than stage productions, even when the story is kept consistent. Why should funders bring stories to the opera house when film versions are guaranteed to make more money?
Now, if we’re talking about money, we inevitably have to talk about distribution of wealth. Obviously, there are certain people with way more money than everyone else, and some of those people don’t give their money to things they consider below them. Which then begs the question: is this all caused by elitism? Do sci-fi, horror, and dystopian genres rarely appear in opera because the stereotypical operagoers are old white men who think that such genres are below them?
Ultimately, I think the answer is no. Yes, opera was literally born out of elitism since it was designed to entertain royalty. Yes, classical music itself is arguably born out of elitism, or at least colonialism, when you think about how much the church and sacred music were and still are involved in classical music’s development. But I don’t think elitism is the answer to this particular puzzle, and I’ll explain why… whenever the next post comes.