Opera or Movie?

I understand that Deems Taylor wrote an opera based on a Cabell story. But it wasn't of The Music From Behind the Moon, the story of his that I think might best be turned into an opera.

Or did Taylor merely write a tone poem?

I forget.

Please advise.

But the more interesting question is: which of his stories could best survive a movie treatment?

I was astounded to learn on The Silver Stallion that someone once wrote a play based on The Rivet. I would love to see that. His "Comedy of Limitations" strikes me as best suited for translation into cinematic form.

But Cream might also work, as could, I suppose, Jurgen.

Of the non-Biography books, surely The First Gentleman of America would translate into the screen best, and might even be a hit.

Any speculations?

(Had I time, I probably would consider composing an opera of The Music from Behind the Moon. It would be fun composing a neo-Renaissance score with a bit of skirling thrown in. Composing the songs that Madoc makes famous, from a feather of the Father of All Lies, could be a hoot. Which style for those? Pillory rap or rock?)

I think i recall reading that Deems Taylor first thought of making Jurgen an opera but changed direction and made a 'symphonic poem' instead. Here are Mike Keith's liner notes for his reconstruction/recording of Taylor's Jurgen: http://web.archive.org/web/20131006072128/http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccol... . Though Keith's limited edition is now o.p and scarce, his performance of it is also used as incidental music in this audiobook performance of Jurgen (group-narrated by William Windom & others): http://smile.amazon.com/Jurgen-Justice-James-Branch-Cabell/dp/1574534505/ref=sr_... . Amazon lists it as o.p. but it turns up on ABE and eBay now and again, e.g. http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=1574534505&sts=t

I agree with Timo that The Music from Behind the Moon may be the Cabell work best-suited for operatic treatment (no rap please!). And he's probably right about the under-rated The First Gentleman of America as a potential screenplay. Both of these are relatively straightforward (read: uncluttered) for a Cabell work. Not that I don't love Cabell's clutter, but it might tend to interfere with translation to other formats. I think some of the Silver Stallion stories might make good short features too.

Here is where you can read about the Rivet play, as well as a humorous screenplay treatment for Jurgen: http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/cabell_trifles.html
http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/trifles/half_horse/pdf/woggle.pdf

Here is a wretched wretched wretched 1980 stage treatment of Jurgen: https://books.google.com/books?id=8Yu_AAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=ca...

And since Cabellian music music was mentioned here's another piece, composed in the 1920s. In working on a supplemental 'About Cabell' bibliography I came across a record of a piece of music composed in 1926-7 by this guy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Blitzstein who i hadnt heard of but who was prominent in the 1930s-1950s and did a lot of literary-related composing for works by O'Casey, L.Hellman, O.Welles etc. "Eleven Circular Canons" was an early work -- I can't seem to find a recording of it -- but one of the eleven is "Sad Hours aka In Dedication to The Certain Hour (James Branch Cabell, 1916)" Here's a record of it
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9KP3BtcfyIQC&oi=fnd&p...

And in the next post, I'll treat(?) you to a draft of a piece for the Silver Stallion site about the earliest known dramatization of a Cabell work. Come to think of it, that might work as an opera too...

Geste of the Girdle intro

Before The Jewel Merchants, before The House of Musgrave, before Poor Jack, there was The Geste of the Girdle -- the earliest play we know of to be based on a work by James Branch Cabell. The Geste is a short play published in 1915 by George M. P. Baird, then an instructor in English at the University of Pittsburgh, where it was staged by The Pitt Players.

The Geste of the Girdle consists of two scenes (designated 'acts'), each with a prologue by a 'wandering player'. The play is a fairly close dramatization of Cabell's short story "The Fox-Brush", which was first published in Harper’s Monthly Magazine in August 1905, then collected in Chivalry (1909). The change in title reflects Baird's alteration of one of the tale's central conceits. In Cabell King Henry, disguised as Alain the minstrel, cuts off a fox's tail (its "brush") and wears it in his hat as he rides away. When, after months of war, the French princess Katherine hears that the invading English king has entered the city bearing before him a fox-brush on a lance she realizes this warlike Henry was the Alain whom she had loved. In Baird, however, there is no fox-brush; instead Katherine gives Alain her golden girdle (decorated belt) to wear in his cap, then later hears that the invading King wears a golden girdle round his helm.

Cabell’s use of the foxtail as a love-token, essential to his treatment of the story of Henry and Katherine, appears to have been his own invention. In a letter to The Cabellian editor Julius Rothman, Cabell stated, “…the germ of every one of the Chivalry stories can be, and was, found in Agnes Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England…” (see The Letters of James Branch Cabell, ed. Edward Wagenknecht, 1975, p.233; Cabell’s 6 volume set of Strickland is now housed in the library at VCU; see Maurice Duke 1968, p.265). Strickland, drawing on earlier sources, tells of Henry entering Rouen bearing a foxtail, and of him wearing a jeweled foxtail in his hat at his betrothal to Katherine, but gives no hint that it had served them as a love-token. (In fact it was one of various insignia of the Duchy of Lancaster, which Henry’s father had used before him.) Why Baird changed this element we do not know – perhaps the cutting off of the tail proved difficult to stage, or seemed too harsh. Since the love-token was Cabell’s invention it also seems unlikely that Baird substituted the girdle based on another source. In his preface, he credits only “Messire Nicolas de Caen in his Dizain of Queens… which was brought to the Garden of Our English in later days by James Branch Cable {sic}”. It is difficult to say whether Baird was taken in by Cabell’s cod-source, or if he was just playing along.

Aside from the substitution of the girdle for the foxtail, and the addition of the wandering player as prologue, Baird’s play tracks “The Fox-Brush” pretty closely in plot. However, in contrast with Poor Jack (an adaptation of Cabell’s story "Love-letters of Falstaff") in which Ben Abramson incorporates much of Cabell’s dialogue word-for-word into the playlet, Baird instead paraphrases and re-words the Cabellian text. Presumably this is attributable in part to Baird having written his play in blank verse. (Although Baird’s verse is archaic in style and diction, redolent of the Romantics and the Elizabethans, it is pretty skillfully done.) Here are a few of some of the more closely corresponding passages in "The Fox-Brush" and The Geste:

- - - - -

Cabell: But I had not heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in tree-tops.

Baird: Does Benedictine rule/
... demand that thou
shouldst say thy "Aves" in an apple tree?

- - - - -

Cabell: Fool, fool! How could I have thought him less than a king?

Baird: God! what a fool!
Fool! Fool! was I, not to have known that he
Was not a minstrel but a king!

- - - - -

Cabell: To see you lying in your coffin I would willingly give up my hope of heaven.

Baird: I would sell my soul
And hope of Heaven, if I might see thee laid
stark on thy bier…”

- - - - -

Cabell: “My dear, be very kind to me, for I come to you naked of honor.” She fell at the King’s feet, embracing his knees. “My Master, be very kind, for there remains only your love.”

Baird: (Weeping she falls upon her knees before Henry.)
Oh, I am weak, Alain;
Deal gently with me, for I come to thee
Bereft of pride, naked of honor, lost
To all but thee…. O love me, my Alain,
For there is nothing left me but thy love.

- - - - -

Finally, we can tell that Baird’s source was the 1909 Chivalry version of the story rather than the 1905 Harpers version, for in the 1905 text Princess Katherine is lodged in the Convent of the Ursalines when Alain/Henry first encounters her, whereas in Chivalry and The Geste she dwelleth in the Convent of St. Scholastica.