Reading Etienne Leroux: a libretto based on Seven Days at the Silbersteins and a preface

Title

Reading Etienne Leroux: a libretto based on Seven Days at the Silbersteins and a preface

author

Lucia, Christine

datePublished

2006

degree

MA Writing

publisher

University of the Witwatersrand

department

Faculty of Humanities

contributor

Titlestad, Michael

description

This research report comprises the preface to an opera libretto based on the English translation by Charles Englington (1964) of Etienne Leroux's novel Seven Days at the Silbersteins (1962), and the libretto itself. In the preface I discuss the genre of operatic libretto and the literary and personal context in which Leroux worked,by way of explaining why Seven Days made such a compelling challenge to adapt as libretto. I consider some of the issues involved in transposing a rambling allegorical narrative produced in Afirkaans in the 1960s in the lineage of the plaasroman, into a tighter post-apartheid discourse in English the 2000s, one that creates space for live music, singing, acting, staging, setting and pre-recorded autio-visuals - some of which take over the 'layered' significations of Leroux's earlier literary discourse. A work of great poetic resonance in the original language (beautifully captured by poet and critic charlies Englington in translation), this surrealist novel, so rooted in cultural and ideological tropes unique to Leroux's time and yet presented by him as if they belonged to a timeless world, presents opportunities for a new kind of realisation as an operatic text in our own time.

keywords

Sewe dae by die Silbersteins, 1962

Seven days at the Silbersteins, 1964

Leroux, Etienne

Englington, Charles

inLanguage

English

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10539/2147

numberOfPages

67

fileFormat

PDF