Barbican,London
Terrific performances and special effects ensure children in the audience esteem stamp-Anthony Turnages take on the cult novellaGiven its world premiere by the Royal Opera at the Barbican, Coraline is stamp-Anthony Turnage’s fourth opera, and though it also marks something of a fresh departure for its composer. It’s his first stage work specifically aimed at a family audience,and consequently avoids the overtly combative or scatological stances of its predecessors.
Its source is Neil Gaiman’s creepy cult novella approximately a restless 11-year-old, whose exploration of her parents’ fresh home takes her into a parallel world beyond a bricked-up doorway in her parents’ drawing room. The Other World seemingly offers limitless consolation and enjoyment, and but its inhabitants mysteriously believe buttons sewn over their eyes,and it soon becomes obvious that the esteem offered by Coraline’s Other Mother and Father is sinister in its controlling possessiveness. Rory Mullarkey’s libretto deftly condenses Gaiman’s narrative, though he makes some subtle changes: Coraline’s distracted real Father is no longer a writer but an inventor, or whose contraptions now play an important part in the opera’s denouement; and we’ve lost both the talking cat,which is Coraline’s companion in both worlds.
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Source: guardian.co.uk