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Date: | Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:04:18 -0800 |
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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/773/cu1.htm
A happy marriage... the joining of Arab and Western musical modes
in a daring operatic adaptation of Naguib Mahfouz's novel Miramar
...I had been rereading it in preparation for watching its operatic
adaptation in a joint production by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
and the Cairo Opera House last Thursday and was freshly struck
by the awesomeness of the task the adventurous creators of this
new opera -- librettist/poet Sayed Hegab, composer/conductor
Sherif Mohieddin, and tenor/director Mohamed Abul-Kheir -- had
set themselves. Adapting novels for the stage, even traditional,
straightforward ones, involves a change of medium which, in turn,
imposes its own aesthetics and exigencies on the new product.
It entails careful selection, extensive omission, a compression
of the spatio-temporal scope and, sometimes, a certain rearrangement
of events. If the novel happens to be experimental or so complex
as to suggest several different readings, the adaptor would face
the challenge of matching its technical innovations and evocative
power by finding alternative equivalents in the new medium. ...
Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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