|
A friend of mine works for an opera company. They are putting on a new show this season that was specifically commissioned for the purpose of "honoring the history of" their fair city. There's some local governmental bicentennial going on, or something.
The problem is, they picked the wrong composer and libretto author. But they're only coming to grips with this reality now, when it's far too late to change. They're merely doing damage control at this point.
The basic plot started out as a love story between a slave and her master. Except slave importation was banned in 1807, and this particular city wasn't founded until 1850. Can't change the city or the date for obvious reasons, so they just bit their tongues and agreed to take a little historical license with these open slave market scenes, hoping that the city historians whom this whole shebang is being sponsored by won't care (since they most certainly will notice.) Okay. The other half of the show was set in 1920 (which was a significant year for the city for some other reason,) with the 1850s scenes being flashbacks of the main character.
Except now, they've realized they don't have the money for period costumes or sets, not even close.
So they're setting the 1920s scenes in "present day," because that's easy to furnish and costume. But the flashbacks are staying in 1850, because otherwise the libretto doesn't even have a pertinent year in the plot to connect it to the city's nonexistent slave history. Thus, the main character in this opera is no less than 175 years old. I think at this point they're just genuinely hoping the city historians aren't so good at math.
|