Source of The Story
In many print media it says that the libretto of Gian-Carlo Menotti is based on a work of Isak Dinesen (pen name for Karen Blixen), described variously as a "short story" or "novella". However, the story is not found in any of Isak Dinesen's works. There is evidence of Samuel Barber's having read Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales, and the mistaking of the proper source may have come from a proclamation by Menotti and Barber, that the opera reproduced the "atmosphere" of Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales. "Menotti recalled, 'I was writing a libretto for Sam, and Sam is essentially a romantic personality...'" Menotti was "inspired by Isak Dinesen's stories, in particular her Seven Gothic Tales. He said, "I felt that the atmosphere... would make a wonderful opera."
Karen Blixen was present at the premiere of the opera on January 7, 1959, but part way through the performance she pleaded illness and left the theater. Her secretary wrote that Barber was "upset" by Blixen's premature departure from the opera. Karen Blixen made no public comment.
Read more about this topic: Vanessa (opera)
Famous quotes containing the words source of, source and/or story:
“Being the dependents of the general government, and looking to its treasury as the source of all their emoluments, the state officers, under whatever names they might pass and by whatever forms their duties might be prescribed, would in effect be the mere stipendiaries and instruments of the central power.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“To not know would be a source of pain.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilised being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)