Writing a stage musical must surely be one of the most demanding and time-consuming of all
creative endeavours.   Victor Kazan and I spent almost all of 2002-2004 working on our musical
adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s haunting, gothic novel, Rebecca.  It was, nonetheless, an
immensely satisfying venture; and we were only too aware that it was going be difficult to find a
vehicle of comparable depth and dimension for our next show – a vehicle enticing enough to
persuade us to begin a lengthy and challenging writing process once more.

Over the ensuing months we rejected out of hand dozens of novels that were either unsuited to
stage adaptation, or failed to stimulate our creative passion.  Then, in late 2007, I chanced across
The Mapmaker’s Opera in a Melbourne bookshop.  Not only did I find the writing and storytelling
utterly compelling, but I also became convinced that Ms. Gonzalez had written her novel as a work
for the stage, retold in novel form!

Certain that this literary work was worth pursuing, I wrote to Ms. Gonzalez, through her Agent,
tentatively suggesting that Victor and I thought The Mapmaker’s Opera would make a great stage
musical, and asked whether she would be prepared to consider offering us the underlying musico-
dramatic rights.

To avoid a long exposition of the complexities of rights acquisition processes, the answer to this
question is almost invariably, “No”.  It came as an unexpected surprise, therefore, to receive an
email from Béa Gonzalez herself, giving her enthusiastic support for our proposition.  “The rest,”
as they say, “is history”.

The Mapmaker’s Opera is, however, more than just a wonderful story.  On several levels, it
reveals to the reader abiding concerns about our relationship to the natural world: how we deal
with the reality of human incursion into natural habitats and the consequences of extinction of
species of flora and fauna, and the dangers of damaging eco systems at our peril.  Irrespective of
where we live, these are issues that confront all humankind.

We have created this web site as the first of several sites to include, Facebook, YouTube
MySpace and Last.fm, to share our experience of putting together The Mapmaker’s Opera for the
stage.  We have also provided the opportunity for our friends and supporters to blog their
responses to the words/music and demo recordings that will become available over the coming
twelve-months, as work on the project progresses.

For a very small fee to cover costs only, charts from the new piano/vocal score to
The Mapmaker’s Opera will be available for purchase from this site beginning sometime
around April 2009.

Lastly, to the person who makes all of this a possibility, the inspirational Béa Gonzalez, we say
thank you.

Kevin Purcell
Victor Kazan