We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
From Novel into Film into Opera Multiple Transformations of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.
- Authors
Halliwell, Michael
- Abstract
The operatic adaptation of fiction usually follows the trajectory from novel into libretto into opera. Occasionally, a novel might be transformed into a spoken drama which later undergoes musical adaptation. Much rarer is the process whereby a 'canonical' novel undergoes an equally 'canonical' film adaptation which then strongly influences subsequent operatic versions. Such is the case with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, made into a celebrated film directed by William Wyler (1939). Two operatic adaptations of the novel followed: Carlisle Floyd's opera (1958), and Bernard Herrmann's version (1965/1982). This paper explores the proposition that it is the film which is the impetus and model for both these operas rather than the original novel. The relentless concentration of the film on the tragic relationship between its two 'storm-tossed' central protagonists is mirrored in both operatic adaptations, a radical departure from the novel's much broader focus, and it can be argued that it is Wyler's film which has established the current romantic (stereotypical) view of the novel which can be seen to be 'filtered' through the prism of the film adaptation into its operatic form.
- Subjects
FILM adaptations; WUTHERING Heights (Film); OPERA; BRONTE, Emily, 1818-1848; WYLER, William
- Publication
Word & Music Studies, 2007, Vol 9, p29
- ISSN
1566-0958
- Publication type
Article