![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Paul and I were determined to establish Jack Torrance as a real human being who has feelings, and wants to be a good father,” Mark said. “He’s an alcoholic, he has abused his son physically, and we later learn that he himself was abused by his father.” For Mark, who was responsible for Silent Night (which the Lyric Opera of Kansas City performed here in 2015) and dozens of other significant American operas (including The Manchurian Candidate, which again returned to the original novel rather than riff off the film versions), the Jack of the novel is far scarier than Kubrick’s chilly one-dimensional villain. “In the novel, Jack is a man who has some serious problems,” said librettist Mark Campbell, who together with composer Paul Moravec created The Shining for Minnesota Opera in 2016. Because unlike the Torrances of the movie, Stephen’s original family consists of living, breathing humans with all of their frailties and strengths: three people who love and care deeply for each other. When it came time to put Stephen King’s The Shining onto the opera stage, its authors found that the 1977 novel packed far more of a gut-punch than Stanley Kubrick’s subsequent film did. Thus the scariest parts of any horror story are not ghosts or spirits that come from “out there,” but instead the monstrous acts committed by ordinary people. The most terrifying thing on earth is the human heart. PHĭanny and the bathtub ghost / Production photos courtesy of Minnesota Opera ![]() In phone conversations, the creative team for The Shining (including composer Paul Moravec, librettist Mark Campbell, and director Eric Simonson) made salient and enlightening comments on the project, and for this reason we have decided to post online an expanded and slightly altered version of the article that already appeared in print on our pages in March. No further news has been announced as to a rescheduling, but please note that subscriptions for the 2020-2021 season (see below) are now on sale. Note: Lyric Opera of Kansas City was compelled to cancel the final production of its season, an operatic treatment of Stephen King’s The Shining, because of the Covid-19 crisis. ![]()
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