COLD MOUNTAIN, The Opera

Screen Shot 2015-08-05 at 12.52.23 PMCharles Frazier’s 1997 novel Cold Mountain, a long-running best seller and National Book Award winner that was made into an equally successful movie, has recently become, wait for it, an opera.

Composed by Jennifer Higdon (who won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in music) with a libretto by Genre Scheer, it premiered last week at the Santa Fe Opera.

Scheer told NPR’s Morning Edition that both he and Higdon “were convinced that [the novel] was really a great idea for an opera. That there was a way of inviting music in to really illuminate the story.”

Frazier was surprised by the request for opera rights, telling NPR “My first reaction was that Inman is such an internal character — that he hardly speaks … To see him on stage singing took a little bit of adjustment.”

That is a common response from authors of print books. But perhaps one that will have to be recalibrated as more and more titles move from the page to the stage. The adaptions are not done, the beloved Tuck Everlasting is coming to Broadway in 2016.

The New York Times reports that interest is so high in Cold Mountain that the Santa Fe Opera mounted an additional a performance and is making plans to release a recording. Until then, here is a sample

The production will move to Opera Philadelphia in Feb. 2016. The Minnesota Opera also has plans to stage it.

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