Shrink composes happy-ending schizophrenia opera
mainUCLA psychiatrist and composer Dr. Kenneth Wells says:
‘I always wondered why there were so many stories of people going mad and killing themselves. Why couldn’t someone tell a powerful, compelling and entertaining story that lifts us up and gives us hope?’
Read on here.
It is an interesting thought to turn tragedy into a story that is uplifting and gives us hope. Quite some opera plots can be readjusted, by Regie-Oper directors, to bring the silver lining to the fore instead of all the misery enjoyed by opera audiences. Carmen’s murder can be presented as a boost to masculine identity in the face of feminism, Tosca’s suicide can be readjusted as a trampoline advertisement, the murder of Siegfried as an encouraging demonstration of the pleasures of javelin throwing, and Salome’s dance with Jochanaan’s head presented as the allure of jihadists’ idealism.