Aaron J. Rabushka wrote:

>James Zehm wrote
>
>>I wonder why nobody ever wrote an opera on "Alice in the Underworld".
>
>Remember that Alice goes behind the looking glass and not into Hades.

Of course she does both.  As Steve Schwartz pointed out, "Alice's
adventures underground" was the original, and more descriptive, title of
"Alice's adventures in Wonderland", which is full of possibilies of death
and physical annihilation in its dream world.

Giampaolo Testoni's opera "Alice" (Agora 1997 AG 107.3) combines parts
of the two Alice books in one, and misses completely the point of Alice's
devastatingly destructive logic and understanding of language.  (Humpty
Dumpty sole involvement for example is to get beaten up by Tweedledum and
Tweedledee, and sing a comic lament on how difficult it is to be an egg.)

But it is an enjoyable pastiche of bel canto in roughly the style of
Strauss at his most romantic, evoking a world of wonders (not the paradoxes
and puzzles of the originals) as seen by a child on the verge of adult
emotion.  Which might have been James Zehm's point in his original
comparison with "The magic flute".

Regards,

Helen Elsom
[log in to unmask]
http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/