Allen Shearer and Claudia Stevens’ ‘Prospero’s Island’ is based on Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest’ and includes of a chorus of singing penguins/
The new opera “Prospero’s Island” is based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and is set on the Falkland Islands.Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” has inspired a new opera — one that features a chorus of singing penguins.
For Oakland-based Shearer and Stevens, who are husband and wife, writing the opera was an opportunity to address long-held questions about this powerful, enigmatic character. Stevens says she imagined that Prospero, who sailed from Milan, was initially destined for Paraguay. But a shipwreck stranded him on a remote island — “where, to his great delight,” she said, “there are many penguins.” By the time we meet them, Prospero has taught them to sing.
“I was very interested in the operatic potential of a daughter finding out about her father’s past, because that was my own experience. I didn’t have a war criminal as a father – but I had, in fact, two parents who were Holocaust survivors. I knew nothing about that, until I was 19, and that was heavy.”
For Shearer, the new opera’s allusions to the Holocaust were essential, but he says the finished product, like Shakespeare’s play, balances its heavier themes with lightness. “There are many elements that come into the music,” he said. “There’s some imported material, some popular music, a lusty country-style song. There’s a more serious style, too, in the music that opens the opera and ends it.
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