The Shining

Stephen King’s The Shining is a contemporary masterpiece of horror, best known to world audiences through Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1980 film featuring Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duval. The premise—a caretaker and his family overseeing an isolated luxury hotel deep in the Colorado wilderness during winter months and the sensational madness that ensues—creates magnificent potential for an operatic treatment. Librettist Mark Campbell and composer Paul Moravec teamed with director/co-conceiver Eric Simonson and The Shining had its premiere at the Minnesota Opera in 2016. The work has been revived on several occasions since and was felt to be a particular good fit for the Atlanta Opera’s Fall “Thriller Three” (previously “Discovery”) series that dates back nearly a decade. The Shining, along with Verdi’s Rigoletto and Shapiro’s Frankenstein were deemed frightening similar by Artistic Director Tomer Zvulum. According to Zvulum, the leading character associated with each of the works was “horribly flawed, yet deeply human.” The Shining was presented in partnership with the Alliance Theatre Company, and the Atlanta production was directed by Brian Staufenbiel, conducted by Timothy Myers and included stage and video designs by Jacquelyne Scott and David Murakami, respectively. The work was presented on the Coca Cola Stage of the Alliance Theatre Company, with “mostly opera folks and a few theatre folks,” according to Zvulum.King’s work offers much in the way of operatic potential. The intense remoteness of the setting creates an immense possibility for unrestrained power and the domination of evil forces. Campbell’s libretto focused on three major events in the novel: the introduction and assimilation of the Torrance family into the world of the Overlook Hotel, the events leading up to and including the relived party scene, and the events leading up to the major explosion in the boiler room (not included in the film). Only a human made element—a boiler that explodes, eventually destroying the hotel—ceases the madness and the destructive madman Jack Torrance. Not included in the movie, the boiler room explosion allowed for an operatic scale denouement realized amidst the hotel’s rubble. Moravec’s haunting atonal score (reminiscent of Berg) ran the gamut of emotions from horror to eternal love. Familial scenes were underscored with a sense of hope and empathy, but the horrific world they encountered was underscored by violent and eclectic disharmonic tones.The compression of time allowed for a reduction of the number of characters in the work and the emphasis of each as individuals. Playing the Torrance family were Craig Irvin (Jack), Kelly Kaduce (Wendy), and Max Walls (Danny) with Kevin Deas (Dick Hallorann) and Victor Ryan Robertson (Stuart Ullman and Delbert Grady) in other featured roles. Numerous chorus members and artists from the Atlanta Opera’s Glynn Studio Artists program filled the smaller comprimario roles and party chorus scenes. Director Staufenbiel notes that perhaps there is no character in the work more important than the Overlook Hotel itself. The history of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado—on which King modeled his fictional Overlook Hotel—includes horrific scenes of drunkenness, murder, adultery, and horror. The scale and depth of that history’s depravity left a ghostly presence in the hotel. The production team deemed the sets, lighting and projections (including video) critical aesthetic choices for making the hotel a dominant force. According to Staufenbiel in the program notes, the scenes were “ruled by naturalism,” and all of what is seen on the surface is simply “as it is.” However, in The Shining there also exists a supernaturalism: otherworldly realms and things that cannot be explained. The Overlook Hotel, filled with its years of evil incidents and spiritual inhabitation appears as an antithetical element that contrasts with and violently opposes the realistic elements in the story. Good only wins over evil in the end through the ultimate sacrifice that Jack makes in order to stop the generational cycle of abuse the story portrays.While successful in its development of time, Campbell’s text was written in a formulaic manner, reminiscent of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century librettos (e.g., Belasco’s text for Girl from the Golden West). Numerous split-scenes, supported by mostly nineteenth-century scenic practices involving smaller movable settings, and designated locations, such as the interior of the Torrances’ personal living space, provided a great deal of the environment for this staging. Projections were often merely laid onto the hotel interior frontispiece, which remained in the background throughout the work. The result was, for the most part, clunky, and the utilization of constructed scenic elements diminished any escape into surrealism or anything other than the real world. At times the work felt like a play designed in the early part of the twentieth century with just a few ghouls and indistinct figures projected onto the scene. The lone exception was the party scene during which video projection and staging choices established a surrealistic tone. Unfortunately, the ultimate realization of the surreal/naturalistic dialectic was not successful, and the work did not have nearly the raw emotion that might be expected of true horror, especially considering the legendary status that Kubrick’s film afforded the work.Campbell’s text does not give Jack an aria; instead, his cataclysmic journey takes place in tandem with other characters, as he sings duets and trios with Wendy and Danny. Thus, he undergoes his psychological breakdown in the midst of direct communication with other characters. In addition to what the hotel provided to it, Irvin’s physical and psychological downfall, as Jack, were advanced through Moravek’s haunting vocal, first landing Jack in the imaginary world of the infamous party and later lifting him almost entirely to the boiler room with Grady and Mr. Ullman as his confidantes. The presence of ghosts and spirits became more pronounced in the latter stages of the opera as they attempted to take the lives of Danny and Wendy, uttering “Kill him,” as they exited the party scene. As Danny and Wendy successfully escape, the demons lead Jack to the boiler room and into a giant explosion that reduces the hotel to rubble in a scene that is viewed by Danny and Mr. Halloran. The two appear immediately thereafter in Maine, fishing outside a smaller hotel with Wendy and, apparently, a new business venture and life ahead.The Atlanta Opera production was conceived on a much smaller scale than the original Minnesota Opera production, which featured an orchestra of sixty, while the Atlanta Opera’s version had an orchestra of only seventeen. Similar reduction was seen in the scale of the staging, which diminished the potential impact of the work. Although the design and scenic elements—almost unwieldy in in scope—were not successful in advancing the stated goals of exploring the realism/surrealism dialectic, the production was aided by strong performances of leading and comprimario characters, solid vocal delivery, and high production values. The bold collaboration between the Alliance Theatre and Atlanta Opera brought a much-needed feature event to the downtown Atlanta Arts scene.