UK composer wins back opera rights from Miramax
OperaThe young composer Noah Max has written an opera on the Holocaust memoir, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
Harvey Weinstein’s former company, which filmed the story, told him that it owned all rights and would not release opera permissions for less than a million dollars.
Noah just won his fight.
But he had to change the title.
Story here.
correction, the boy in the striped pajamas is not a memoir. it’s a novel. and even goes so far as to call itself a fable lest people mistake it for historical fiction.
It is a story where the audience is supposed to sympathize with the Nazis. There is no point for anyone to see/read it at all.
Contrived nonsense of a book became contrived nonsense of a movie, I’m not holding out much hope that the opera will be any better.
Good on him for taking on Miramax and winning though.
Very moving film.
It so does not need to be operaized.
Here is some music by Mr Max:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVe2gUFuTY
That was clearly crap, but this is much better – ‘going traditional’, of a kind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OiiWcuakAs
It shows how difficult it is to use traditional means and creating a coherent whole. But it shows a very promising talent, nonetheless.
Here is some information about Mr Max:
https://www.noahmax.net/inconversation
The way the headline is written it reads as though the composer owned the original rights to the story. “Wins back”?