Elmer Gantry

[papeetepatrick]

This sounds exciting, and the story is rather inspiring, since it took so long and managed to emerge against nearly insurmountable odds:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/arts/mus....html?ref=music

[dirac]

Thanks for posting, papeetepatrick. This sounds like a promising idea for an opera. Food for thought in the article, too.

If critics often bemoan the state of the pipeline that delivers new works for the American theater, at least there is a pipeline. Opera has more of a pipette, or a tear duct: only a trickle emerges, and only after prolonged suffering. With production costs for new works so extreme — the seven performances of “Elmer Gantry” will cost its presenters $700,000 — and success so unlikely, few companies will risk a commission on anyone short of a star composer like Wynton Marsalis or John Corigliano. And without a commission you might as well be a peddler of luxury goods in a poorhouse.

Records kept by Opera America, the service organization for the field, tell the story. During the 2007-8 season, major United States opera houses will offer 370 productions of some 150 works; the Top 25 titles, all European war horses, represent more than half of what will be seen.

[bart]

Given the $700,000 price tag (shared, presumable, with Montclair State in New Jersey), it seems especially daring to commision an opera based on this novel -- with its devastating picture of an opportunistic and flagrantly hypocritical evangelical minisister -- for performance in Nashville, the heart of the Bible Belt. It was nice to hear that the opera seems to have been a local success. The stories of the US's "culture wars" continue to generate very interesting and often unexpected episodes.

Regarding the survey of opera productions, I wonder what the results would be for classically based American ballet companies (once you've factored out the innumerable versions of Nutcracker, Nutcracker, Nutcracker, etc.).

[papeetepatrick]

it seems especially brave to produce an opera based on this novel -- with its devastating picture of an opportunistic and flagrantly hypocritical evangelical minisister -- in Nashville, the heart of the Bible Belt.

I liked that touch too, almost gives it a special flavour. And especially with the Grand Ole Opry House for Country Music there... but where Farrell, Baryshnikov, McBride and Martins recorded a PBS special, which I saw at the time, but believe is not readily available any more. I recall some of them were interviewed by Lynn Redgrave at the end. I, too, like the way the culture wars occasionally produce something really unexpected and special.