From its origins, theater -- in both its dramatic and lyric forms -- has drawn upon earlier works for adaptation and reconfiguration. Aeschylus, the first great playwright, referred to his tragedies like The Oresteia as "slices from Homer's great banquet." Only one of William Shakespeare's plays, The Tempest, has no identifiable source; all his other works draw from historical chronicles and biographies or narratives in dramatic, poetic, or prose forms. When opera was created in Italy toward the end of the 16th century, it was the myth of Orpheus and the plots of earlier Greek tragedies that were looked to for source material.

Contemporary novels have inspired many modern composers. John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1999, with Jerry Hadley in the title role. Seen here are Dawn Upshaw (left) as Daisy, Dwayne Croft as Nick, and Susan Graham as Jordan. Photo courtesy The Metropolitan Opera

As opera evolved, existing plays became the favored source of opera libretti. Giuseppe Verdi, for example, wrote many of his operas using libretti based on the plays of Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, and Friedrich Schiller. Puccini's librettists turned to popular melodramas by such playwrights as Sardou and Belasco for their source material. Richard Wagner, on the other hand, favored Norse and Germanic mythology as the source material for the libretti he fashioned himself for his music dramas, while Richard Strauss collaborated with one successful playwright (Hugo von Hofmannsthal) and set the text of another (Oscar Wilde).

Contemporary opera composers and librettists continue to use plays as their source material. (André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire, William Bolcom's A View from the Bridge -- seen late last year at the Metropolitan Opera -- and Peter Eötvös's setting of Jean Genet's The Balcony -- premiered last summer at Aix-en-Provence -- are three recent examples.) The emphasis, however, seems to have shifted toward using fiction as the primary resource for new operas. Carlisle Floyd has been one of the pioneers in this field; since the 1950s he has written operatic versions of Wuthering Heights, All the King's Men (retitled Willie Stark), and Of Mice and Men. John Harbison's opera The Great Gatsby was given its premiere in 1999 by the Metropolitan Opera and Mark Adamo's version of Little Women can be seen this spring at New York City Opera. Two Juilliard alumni have written recent operas based on novels: Lowell Liebermann's Portrait of Dorian Gray was premiered in Monte Carlo in May 1996, and Scott Eyerly's House of the Seven Gables was presented in December 2000 at the Manhattan School of Music and recorded by Albany Records.

Sophie's Choice, Nicolas Maw's opera based on William Styron's 1979 novel, opened in December 2002 at the Royal Opera Covent Garden. Angelika Kirchschlager (center) sang the title role, and Rodney Gilfry (far right) sang Nathan. Photo by Catherine Ashmore, courtesy Royal Opera

Finding the appropriate structure for an opera's libretto is especially difficult when the source is a novel of epic scope like Tolstoy's War and Peace (set to music by Serge Prokofiev) or Resurrection (composed by Tod Machover and premiered in Houston in 1999). Even novels of less narrative breadth pose significant challenges for operatic adapters. For Nicholas Maw, the British composer whose version of William Styron's Sophie's Choice premiered at Covent Garden last December, the central problem was capturing the sense of memory so crucial to the novel's success. To do so, Maw -- acting as his own librettist -- decided to write a series of short scenes that incorporated the flashbacks found in the novel. In order to tie these scenes together, he employed a narrator who "becomes very involved in the action, both emotionally and in the way he puts forward the memory of a scene." (Opera News, December, 2002)

Even though most operas are usually identified through their composers -- who usually choose the librettist and/or the source material for the work -- it is the librettist who creates not only the words but the structure or architecture of an opera. According to Patrick J. Smith, former editor of Opera News (in his definitive study of the opera libretto, The Tenth Muse), the librettist is "at once a dramatist, a creator of word, verse, situation, scene and character and... an artist who... can often visualize the work as a totality more accurately than the composer." It is clear, for example, that Nicholas Maw's work as librettist preceded -- and was integral in shaping -- the music he then composed for Sophie's Choice.

Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw became an opera in 1954 with music by Britten and libretto by Myfanwy Piper. (Of the productions pictured on this page, only Britten did not write his own libretto.) Above, in a 2000 New York City Opera production, are Amy Burton as the governess and Jacob Ashworth as Miles. Photo by Carol Rosegg/New York City Opera

No 20th-century composer drew upon a wider range of literary sources for his operas than Benjamin Britten, whose 1954 work The Turn of the Screw will be presented this month by the Juilliard Opera Theater. His best known opera, Peter Grimes, was based on an 18th-century narrative poem, The Borough, by George Crabbe, who was born in and wrote about Aldeburgh, where Britten lived and created his summer festival with his longtime collaborator and life partner, Peter Pears. Among his operas based on dramatic sources are The Rape of Lucretia (presented several years ago by J.O.T. and based on a play by Andre Obey); Noye's Flood (based on a medieval mystery play); Curlew River (inspired by a Noh drama); and A Midsummer Night's Dream, with a libretto that Britten and Pears fashioned by condensing Shakespeare's play.

Rather than attempting operatic versions of long, complicated novels, when Britten turned to fiction for inspiration for his operas, it was often to dense short stories or novellas that nevertheless posed significant problems for the librettist. As Gary Schmidgall writes in Literature as Opera, "Throughout his career Britten sought out the challenge of literature in difficult and -- at least at first glance -- operatically infertile works." Neither Herman Melville's Billy Budd nor Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, with their strong philosophical elements, would seem obvious choices, since other dramatizations of these works are not considered to have captured the spirit or essence of the originals. Yet in both cases, Britten and his librettists -- including the noted novelist E.M. Forster, co-librettist of Billy Budd -- fashioned operas that have been highly praised and continue to be performed.

John Steinbeck inspired Carlisle Floyd's Of Mice and Men. Dean Ely (crouching) is George and Anthony Dean Griffey is Lennie in New York City Opera's 1998 production. Photo by Carol Rosegg/New York City Opera

Another author whose work might seem an unlikely source for operatic adaptation is Henry James, whose writing contains great subtlety and complexity and who was notably unsuccessful when he tried to write for the stage himself. In addition to The Turn of the Screw, based on one of James's best known works, Britten also composed an opera version of James's story Owen Wingrave in 1969, on a commission from the BBC. For both of his James operas -- as well as for Death in Venice, his final operatic work -- Britten chose as his librettist Myfanwy Piper, who had attended many rehearsals of his earlier operas as the wife of Britten's collaborator, designer John Piper.

In bringing The Turn of the Screw to the operatic stage, Britten and Piper faced many challenges. In the James novella, the central character of the governess serves as the narrator of the story; the crucial figures of the ghosts she encounters in her new position taking care of two children at the country house of Bly do not speak. In the opera, an anonymous narrator provides a prologue that sets the stage for the ensuing action but is not heard from again. As for the ghosts, in his book Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, Eric Walter White writes, "...Britten decided it was essential for the opera that the ghosts should sing 'and sing words (no nice, anonymous, supernatural humming or groaning.'" This enabled the collaborators, for example, to conclude the first act with a sextet in which the six characters of the opera -- two children, two adults, and two ghosts -- are onstage together, and to begin the second act with a duet scene for the two ghosts.

According to Ned Canty, the stage director for the J.O.T. production of The Turn of the Screw, it is hard to imagine a work of literature that, at first glance, seems less suitable for operatic treatment than the James novella. He points out that the ambiguity and sense of dread that characterize the novella depend on the "unreliable narrator" of the governess and the fact that the ghosts are never heard from. As Canty (who previously directed Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld for J.O.T.) sees it, once the ghosts are given corporeal reality onstage, it becomes a very different piece.

Juilliard Opera Theater Britten's The Turn of the Screw Juilliard Theater Tuesday and Thursday, March 25 and 27, 8 p.m. Free; no tickets required.

In order to retain some of the ambiguity of the original text, Canty has chosen an unusual approach to his production. Since there are two separate casts for the two performances, he will present two almost diametrically opposite interpretations. For one cast, the ghosts will be real forces of evil attempting to subvert the innocence of children (a favorite Britten subject). For the other, the production will raise a strong sense of suspicion that the ghosts and their actions all exist in the imagination of the governess. By approaching the performances this way, Canty believes he will not only allow each cast to have a unique experience that capitalizes on their individual strengths, but will also capture some of the ambiguity of the original story, which has often been interpreted in both of these starkly different ways.

The Turn of the Screw has 16 scenes and a prologue, as well as 16 orchestral interludes structured as a theme and 15 variations. The concentrated scope of the material, as well as the size of the cast (there is no chorus), encouraged Britten to orchestrate it as a chamber opera, using an orchestral configuration similar to that of two of his previous works, The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring. In capturing the intimacy as well as the mysteriousness of James's "ghost story," Britten and Piper have provided a model of operatic adaptation, a work that captures the essential nature of the original while translating it into dramatic and musical terms that transcend the individual experience of literature and make possible the collective communication of the theatrical experience.

Roger Oliver, a member of the liberal arts faculty, also teaches in the Drama Division.