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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