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”.
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 July 2011.
Lastly, to the person who makes all of this a possibility, the inspirational Béa Gonzalez, we say
thank you.
Kevin Purcell
Victor Kazan
Recent Comments