Film, TV, Theatrical or Other Adaptations
Voss has also been adapted into an opera of the same name written by Richard Meale with the libretto by David Malouf. The world premiere was at the 1986 Adelaide Festival of Arts conducted by Stuart Challender.
David Lumsdaine's 'Aria for Edward John Eyre' also draws inspiration from Voss, in relating Eyre's journey across Australia's Great Australian Bight (that is, along the southern coast from what is now the Eyre Peninsula to King George's Sound, the site of modern Albany), as documented in his journals, but doing so in a psychologised form similar to the relationship White depicts between Voss and Laura Trevelyan.
White wanted Voss to be produced as a film and Sydney musical promoter Harry M. Miller bought the rights. Ken Russell and then Joseph Losey were White's choice for director. Losey and scriptwriter David Mercer arrived in Sydney in 1977 but after a few days in the desert scouting locations the director was hospitalised with viral pneumonia. Miller wanted to cast Donald Sutherland as Voss and Mia Farrow as Laura Trevelyan but White disagreed saying that Farrow was too soft and of Sutherland, "That flabby wet mouth is entirely wrong. Voss was dry and ascetic – he had a thin mouth like a piece of fence-wire. I do think a whole characterisation can go astray on a single physical feature like that." Maximillian Schell was cast to play the explorer and the script was finalised but Miller was unable to raise sufficient capital for production and the film was never made.
Read more about this topic: Voss (novel)
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