Wuthering Heights (musical)
Bernard J. Taylor's musical/operatic version of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights first appeared in 1992 as a studio recording featuring Lesley Garrett as Cathy, Dave Willetts as Heathcliff, Bonnie Langford as Isabella Linton and other stars of Britain's West End stage. The show has since been translated into six languages from the original English and has been extensively staged in the UK, USA, The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Romania, Australia and New Zealand. In 2008 a production was being planned in Budapest, Hungary, where Taylor's Much Ado received its European continental premiere in 2007. Lesley Garrett has included her recording of 'I Belong To The Earth' on two of her solo albums.
The adaptation had the support of the Bronte Society at Haworth in Yorkshire, whose curator at the time, Dr. Juliet Barker, wrote: "Various other attempts at adapting Wuthering Heights for the stage have been submitted to the Bronte Society in the past but Bernard Taylor's adaptation is the first that I have really approved of and would be prepared to support."
Mark Seaward, Editor of the Bronte Society's magazine, wrote: "Wuthering Heights is an intensely dramatic work, charged with emotion; it is not surprising that many dramatists, choreographers, lyricists and composers have been drawn to recreate it for stage and screen. There have been seven major films between 1920 and 1991 and in addition there has been a ballet (1982), and opera (1967) and numerous adaptations and plays, including several for television — and not forgetting Kate Bush’s song “Wuthering Heights” which topped the charts! Bernard J. Taylor’s work marks the first time that the true spirit and drama of Emily Brontë’s masterpiece has been captured in a musical."
The summer, 1992 edition of Show Music Magazine, USA, reported: "Bernard J. Taylor's big, sweepingly romantic score sustains a feeling of dark passion entirely appropriate for an adaptation of Emily Bronte's novel concerning the ill-fated love between Cathy and Heathcliff."
Read more about Wuthering Heights (musical): Musical Numbers
Famous quotes containing the word heights:
“We shall make mistakes, but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles. I remember that my old school master Dr. Peabody said in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled, he said things in life will not always run smoothly, sometimes we will be rising toward the heights and all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great thing to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)