John Corigliano and Mark Adamo spoke with Presto Music about the creation process of their latest opera and release The Lord of Cries:
Presto: Tell me a little about the process of adapting Stoker’s narrative and characters…
Mark Adamo: “All I needed to do was to map the play onto the novel and eliminate everything that didn’t fit into the Euripidean template. Seward would become the protagonist; Mina and Lucy could profitably be combined into one character, and Dracula becomes Dionysus. It seemed completely obvious to me, but when I presented it to Houston Grand Opera they said ‘Yeah…maybe not!’.
So I put it in a drawer and moved onto another project, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, but a little later John and I were looking for something to do together and I suggested he should look at Dracula. The night before I sent the treatment off to Houston I remember saying to him: ‘I love what I’ve found in this dramatically, but if it’s accepted I’m going to have to bend over backwards not to write a good pastiche of your music – the scenario has your name all over it!’.
At that point John was insisting that he’d never do another opera – after every project he says ‘I’m never doing this again!’, so the fact that this is his second opera is kind of a record! It’s the first big thing we’ve done together.”
Read the full article HERE.
