characters is Margot Macomber. In the story she runs the gamut from a murderous trollop to a delicate, loving wife; but weve got no time for that. In the opera, Mrs. Macomber loses some of her subtlety, and the rebukes she directs at her husband are more venomous and concrete so the audience can see more clearly that she holds the reigns as far as the marriage is concerned. Conversely, Mr. Macomber is simplified to the extent that his transformation toward the end of the story is more dramatic. To accomplish this, the actor playing Francis must take on effeminate qualities in the first few acts while kowtowing to his wife, then when he comes of age he can drop the affectations and the spectators can clearly see that his character has transformed. This drastic alteration of character qualities has precedence, though. For instance, in Merimees Carmen Jose is a sympathetic character that, through a series of unfortunate incidences and his passionate love for Carmen, is lead into a life of robbery and murder. The libretto has no time for profundity though, and Jose is depicted as a brash and violent fool who is duped into joining the band of gypsy smugglers. The three characters mentioned are the only characters with significant parts in the story, and thus the only ones that need to be condensed.If you hear a kind of dry rustling sound, it might be Hemingway rolling over in his grave, because Im now going to recount how I adapted the story from the vast landscape of the mind to the claustrophobia inducing dimensions of the stage. The story is told in an extremely clever way utilizing several literary devices including a lengthy flashback of the lion hunt. Flashbacks, while entertaining on your average sitcom, do not transfer well to the operatic genre. Therefore, my first modification of the story was to tell it in a completely linear manner. In the opera the curtain opens on the three main characters the morning of the lion hunt, and afte...
