chickenfeet

Yesterday on our way to see Salome, lemur_catta and I were discussing stories that should be operas but don't seem to be and then trying to come up with an appropriate composer (alive or dead), for example, Anna Karenina. Now, as it happens there is an Anna Karenina with music by the American, David Carlson, and, unbeknown to me, Britten was working on one for the Bolshoi when the Russian tanks rolled into Prague aborting that project.

Here are some of the ones we came up with:

Dracula - Bartok or Kodaly

Burial of the Rats - Mozart (but only because we want to see how Jeannette Zingg would work castanets into the choreography for the rat women*)

Beowulf - obviously Heaney does the libretto but how about the music? I think this might be one for Tippett

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Shostakovich (Musically it might be easier to do The Love Girl and the Innocent)

ETA: The Night Porter - Richard Strauss (this is so, so wrong)

There was also my personal nightmare, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu with music by Stockhausen though, on reflection, I think Boulez would be even more frightening.

What do you think?

*extremely obscure Toronto opera scene in joke