So riffing off an idea raised in comments over at Likely Impossibilities, what books, films, plays, stories or other source material would you like to see made into an opera? Feel free to suggest a composer and librettist and even cast it if you so wish! To start the ball rolling I’ll offer up a few suggestions.
I admit to some surprise that a new work can make it to the stage at Covent Garden and be received with near universally dismal reviews. I’ve never been involved in creating an opera but I have been involved in any number of large complex projects and I’ve also studied the processes by which projects with a creative component can best be accomplished (I’ve done this for both R&D and advertising). Creating an opera is a project and one would think it would make sense to adopt the same sort of project management principles one would use for bringing a fighter jet to production or developing a piece of software. It’s not like there isn’t a wealth of (really boring) literature on project management. The PMBOK or PRINCE-2 manuals make great bed time reading for insomniacs. Obviously, good project management isn’t enough and I know only too well the pressures that are applied to keep projects going that should have been killed off, especially in the public sector, and I’m prepared to believe that they apply to opera; unwilingness to admit the project was ill conceived, not wanting to be the bad guy, not wanting to take bad news upstairs etc. I’ve seen project teams and their leadership flayed alive by senior management for suggesting a project was doomed (and seen the project continued at many times the estimated cost for a fraction of the benefit). That doesn’t mean one ought not to try.
operaramblings 