mper their posteriors, the characters need to be simplified. The story too feels the wrath of my revisionists pen, because it needs to be mangled and contorted to fit on the average stage. I know what youre thinking, something to the effect of, How can you, despite your obvious genius, think to rewrite a story written by the great Hemingway? Well youve got a lot of nerve asking me that, but since Im obviously on trial here Ill offer my defense. Librettists have traditionally resorted to the tactics mentioned above when composing opera. Its true, from Giacosas libretto of Madame Butterfly to Strauss take on Salome by Oscar Wilde, writers have taken whatever steps they felt were necessary to bring the works from the page to the stage. Does this new, revised version of the story do justice to Hemingways brilliance? No, of course not. The point isnt to encompass Hemingways story in music, but to create an entirely new work, based on Ernests original idea.The first task I undertook was to simplify the characters of The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber. In order for the opera to be understood by the myriad Joe six-packs out there, the players must be boiled down to their base elements. This gives them more of an artificial feel, and depth that is usually reserved for cartoon villains. In Hemingways story Robert Wilson, the great white hunter, is both cold and caring, brutal and passionate. This sort of dynamic characterization cannot easily be transferred to the opera genre, and therefore Wilson becomes more two-dimensional in the libretto. To accomplish this I emphasized his cold detachment, while editing out the chitchat he has with Francis, as well as the compassionate interior dialogue thats in the story. This leaves the character of Wilson a more hollow version of the one in the story; in the opera we find him to be a very proper British caricature with the cold heart of a professional killer. Next in our cavalcade of simplified ...
