The P. Craig Russell Library of Opera Adaptations: Vol. 2: Adaptations of Parsifal, Ariane & Bluebeard, I Pagliacci & Songs By Mahler (2) - Hardcover

Russell, P. Craig

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1561633720 ISBN 13: 9781561633722

Publisher: NBM Publishing, 2004

Synopsis

In this volume, Russell’s classic adaptations of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal from the legend of the Holy Grail, Ariane & Bluebeard by Maeterlinck and Dukas, “The Clowns” taken from I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, as well as two songs by Mahler: “The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow" and “Unto This World.”

About this title

About the Author

P. Craig Russell is one of the most respected artists in comics and is well-known for his many stunning adaptations. He lives in Kent, Ohio.

Reviews

Cartoonist Russell has been drawing adaptations of the operatic repertoire for close to 30 years, and this volume surveys a wide historical selection of his opera comics. Russell's mad passion for the stories and images he's adapting helps him pull off the obviously tough act of showing opera without music. The 1970s version of Wagner's Parsifal that opens the book (and is its weakest work) was done around the same time that Russell was illustrating superhero and science fiction comics for Marvel. Even then he was drawing on fine art (especially turn-of-the-century aesthetics) for his compositional ideas. The prize of the book is a long, lush, magisterial adaptation of Dukas's Ariane and Bluebeard, originally published in 1989. It's one of the most visual of operas, to begin with—half the plot has to do with the play of light—and Russell opens up and roars like a star tenor, fiercely stylizing everything from the opera's architecture to its sunbeams and indulging in wordless passages that let him cut loose with enormous spectacles. A b&w 1998 take on I Pagliacci seems cramped and rushed, but the more experimental fantasias on two Mahler songs that round out the volume are small gems: the less Russell has to address the intricacies of plot, the more he can indulge his visual imagination.
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The closest Classics Illustrated got to opera was William Tell, adapting Schiller's play rather than Rossini's grandest work. Too bad, because opera is customarily visually opulent. But then, Classics Illustrated didn't have Russell, the most opulent contemporary realistic comics artist, who loves opera. His second roundup of opera adaptations includes Wagner's Parsifal, Dukas' Ariane and Bluebeard, Mascagni's I Pagliacci, and, for good measure, two Mahler songs. Russell portrays Parsifal's encounters with the witch Kundry and the eunuch sorcerer Klingsor in the middle of the opera (some earlier events appear in flashback) and wisely discards the New Age-ish ending. Dukas' crypto-feminist modification of Bluebeard, with its rooms full of gems, lets Russell indulge his lapidary flair and conjure a morbid decorativeness also found in the Mahler song illustrations. Best comes last, though. Russell's Pagliacci, a black-and-white collaboration with Galen Showman, is the most dynamic in action, the most varied in angle of vision from panel to panel, and, like the original--a verismo, or real-life opera--the most humanly engaging. Bravo, maestro, bravo! Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: NBM Publishing
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1561633720
• ISBN 13: 9781561633722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128