Artists inspired by real life often take liberties with the truth to create compelling stories. This is especially true in opera, where narratives are enhanced with music and drama. The most captivating operas often stem from real-world events that are already absurd, scandalous, or fantastical.
Many composers have adapted myths, plays, and books into operas, but some have drawn inspiration from sensational real-world events, both contemporary and historical. Here are ten real-life tales and scenarios so wild that they were transformed into operas.
Orango
In the early 20th century, Russian biologist Ilya Ivanov sought to create human-ape hybrids, believing they would be smarter and stronger than humans or apes. Funded by the Soviets, he brought chimpanzees to Russia and attempted to inseminate a mentally unwell woman. Though the experiment failed, composer Dmitri Shostakovich visited Ivanov’s lab.
This visit inspired Shostakovich to write Orango in 1932, a sci-fi opera about a human-ape hybrid sold to a Soviet circus. Shostakovich abandoned the work, but the first 35 minutes of music were recovered in 2004.
Weisse Rose
Hans Scholl, 24, and his sister Sophie, 21, once leaders in the Hitler Youth, rejected the organization and joined the White Rose, a group of students and a professor from the University of Munich. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets to raise awareness of Nazi atrocities among middle-class Germans.
Arrested in February 1943 while distributing leaflets, Hans and Sophie were executed four days later after a show trial. Today, they’re seen as German heroes, their story told in plays, movies, and an opera by East German composer Udo Zimmermann. Weisse Rose was an immediate success, performed in over 30 cities within two years of its premiere.
Eliogabalo
Roman historians often accused emperors they disliked of incest and fighting as gladiators. Emperor Heliogabalus was accused of prostituting himself and seeking gender reassignment. During his brief, scandalous reign, he had at least four wives but also bedded the wives of others and numerous men.
His excesses led to his assassination by his own Praetorian Guard. Francesco Cavalli composed the opera Eliogabalo in 1667, but the local theater in Venice refused to perform it, and it only premiered in 2007.
The Eternity Man
Before Banksy, Sydney had Arthur Stace, known as “The Eternity Man.” He chalked the word “Eternity” half a million times on the city’s streets in the 1950s and ’60s. Stace, a former petty criminal and alcoholic, converted to Christianity in 1930 and dedicated his life to converting others, writing “Eternity” to make people consider their preparation for it.
In his honor, the word “Eternity” lit up Sydney Harbour Bridge for the new millennium. Australian composer Jonathan Mills adapted his story into a short opera called The Eternity Man, following Stace from his time as a police lookout at a brothel to his famous nightly mission.
The Death of Klinghoffer
John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, which premiered in 1991, is based on the 1985 hijacking of the MS Achille Lauro by the Palestinian Liberation Front. The hijackers, posing as passengers, forced the ship back to sea. Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly Jewish man in a wheelchair, was shot and thrown overboard.
The opera’s controversy lies in its depiction of the hijackers, with some accusing it of being sympathetic to extremism.
The Trial of Mary Lincoln
In 1875, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s widow, became overwhelmed with fear for her son Robert’s health while visiting Florida. Robert, concerned by her behavior, sought to have her placed in a sanitarium. In Illinois, this required a jury trial.
After a three-hour trial, the jury agreed she needed care, and Mary spent three months in a sanitarium while Robert controlled her estate. Whether she was truly ill remains unclear. Thomas Pasatieri adapted this episode into an opera for television, which premiered on PBS in February 1972.
Lizzie Borden
It took until 1965 for the Lizzie Borden story to become an opera, despite the 1892 double homicide inspiring books, plays, and a ballet. The opera portrays Lizzie as the axe-wielding murderer of her father and stepmother.
Though acquitted in real life, she remains the prime suspect. Jack Beeson’s opera explores Lizzie’s transformation from a Sunday School teacher to a killer, attributing the murders to fears about marriage, her father’s domineering personality, and her stepmother’s spite. The opera builds from a gentle start to a bloody climax.
Paavo the Great. Great Race. Great Dream.
Paavo the Great. Great Race. Great Dream. is a contemporary opera about Paavo Nurmi, “The Flying Finn,” a middle-distance runner who won nine Olympic gold medals and set 25 world records in the 1920s. A national hero, Nurmi’s operatic tragedy came with World War II, which led to the cancellation of the 1940 Helsinki Games, dashing his dream of winning the marathon at home.
In 2000, composer Tuomas Kantelinen set Nurmi’s story to music, performed in the Helsinki Olympic Stadium with the lead actor running laps, an army helicopter, and burning haystacks.
Song from the Uproar: The Lives & Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt
Isabelle Eberhardt, a Swiss writer and adventurer who lived from 1877 to 1904, packed multiple lifetimes into her short life. She moved to Algeria, disguised herself as a man, and wrote about her experiences. She smoked, drank, had affairs, and joined a Sufi brotherhood, accused of spying for the French.
Eberhardt survived an assassination attempt, syphilis, and malaria but drowned in a flash flood at 27. Missy Mazzoli adapted her life into the opera Song from the Uproar in 2012, featuring only one role.
The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who defected to the UK and criticized Putin, worked as a journalist and a British spy. In November 2006, before testifying about Russian criminals in Spain, he met former associates in London, who poisoned his tea with polonium-210.
He died three weeks later from radiation poisoning. Anthony Bolton composed an opera about his life, which premiered in 2021 and was praised for its faithful retelling.
Opera composers have found inspiration in the wildest corners of reality, transforming bizarre experiments, political scandals, and personal tragedies into unforgettable stage productions. These operas not only entertain but also shed light on the extraordinary stories that shape our world.
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