![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Robert-Weley-Mason-as-Jack-Torrence-right-in-The-Shining-Photo-by-Cory-Weaver-for-Opera-Parallele-1..jpeg\")
Robert Wesley Mason as Jack Torrance (R) in \u2018The Shining.\u2019 Credit: Cory Weaver \/ Opera Parall\u00e8le<\/p>\nRobert Wesley Mason as Jack Torrance (R) in \u2018The Shining.\u2019 Credit: Cory Weaver \/ Opera Parall\u00e8le<\/p>\n
Some years back, Paul Moravec<\/a> got a call from the people at the Minnesota Opera. They wanted to commission a new opera, and the wondered if he\u2019d be interested in composing the music.\u00a0 Sure, he said. They started tossing out some idea for what the source material for the opera might be. One of their suggestions was \u201cThe Shining.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe looked a number of possibilities, and finally they proposed to me \u2018The Shining\u2019,\u201d Moravec told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. \u201cAnd I thought \u2018Wow, what an idea!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t necessarily think it was a great idea, though.<\/p>\n \u201cI just thought, \u2018What an idea,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThat was my immediate response. That was holding open that it might be a good idea. But it was just that it had never occurred to me. It never would have occurred to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever reticence he felt came because, at that point, he had only seen Stanley Kubrick\u2019s film version of the Stephen King novel.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I read the book, I understood that this was an ideal topic for an opera,\u201d Moravec said. \u201cI really think it\u2019s perfect. It has all the elements that drive opera.\u201d<\/p>\n Minnesota Opera suggested Mark Campbell as a librettist. Their opera version of \u201cThe Shining\u201d premiered in 2016.<\/p>\n Tampa audiences have a chance to experience it as Opera Tampa\u2019s production happens at The Straz Center\u2019s Ferguson Hall for two performances, at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 1.<\/a><\/p>\n Moravec and Campbell both have stellar resumes. They\u2019ve each won a Pulitzer Prize\u2014Moravec for his chamber piece \u201cTempest Fantasy,\u201d Campbell for his libretto for \u201cSilent Night\u201d\u2014and it takes some time to scroll through the list of the operas, musicals, and concert pieces they\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n Still, before the premiere a decade ago, some observers had suspicions about the opera, based as it was on an ultra-popular 20th-century horror novel. But it almost uniformly won over critics, even those who may have had a prejudice toward more classical themes in opera.<\/p>\n It was also, perhaps more predictably, enormously popular with audiences.<\/p>\n Ryan Taylor had performed as a singer at Minnesota Opera many times, and he knew its theater well. But he had just come on board as president and general director of Minnesota Opera when \u201cThe Shining\u201d was about to premiere. In fact, it opened during his first week on the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was told the week I got here that all of the seats for \u2018The Shining\u2019 had been sold, including the standing room seats,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cI was like \u2018What? What do you mean? Where are the standing room seats?\u2019 I didn\u2019t even know our theater had those.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not common for American opera companies to perform to full houses, but every performance of the world premiere run of \u201cThe Shining,\u201d Minnesota Opera had people eager to pay money to stand for two hours.<\/p>\n Other opera companies have performed \u201cThe Shining\u201d in the intervening decade, and audiences have responded enthusiastically all over the country.<\/p>\n Critics have responded just as favorably, praising Moravec\u2019s evocative music, which has been noted for feeling contemporary without abandoning classical tonality, and Campbell\u2019s chilling libretto.<\/p>\n Most fans of \u201cThe Shining,\u201d either the King novel or the Kubrick movie, love it for its chills. And in fact, Taylor calls the opera \u201cterrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n But Moravec approached it as a classic opera story, and even as a romance.<\/p>\n \u201cI think of opera as depending on the elements,\u201d he said, \u201clove, death and power. And all three of those elements are in the book on steroids. It\u2019s very, very compelling, and very dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephen King is rather famously not a fan of the Kubrick\u2019s film, so when Moravec emailed King to get the rights to the book, he didn\u2019t mention the film at all. Morvaec himself, though, loves both the movie and the novel.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not what Stephen King wrote,\u201d Moravec said of the film. \u201cI can see why Mr. King doesn\u2019t like it. However, I think it\u2019s a brilliant film on its own terms. It\u2019s icy and cold but ever frame is beautiful. It\u2019s remarkable, It\u2019s Kubrick.<\/p>\n \u201cBut it\u2019s not operatic. There\u2019s no charter arc. There\u2019s no trajectory. You see Jack Nicholson arching his eyebrows and you know he\u2019s nuts, right from the beginning. There\u2019s nowhere to go with that. In the book, it\u2019s a real tragedy. It\u2019s a terrible dilemma that he faces.\u201d<\/p>\n Moravec said the disparate endings of the book and the movie epitomize the differences in their emotional tones.<\/p>\n \u201cThe movie ends frozen, right?\u201d he sad. \u201cIt ends in ice. And the book ends in fire, with the\u00a0 hotel blowing up.\u201d<\/p>\n But what makes the book great, Moravec said, is the human story underlying the horror. And that\u2019s what he and Campbell have tried to do with their opera.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, it\u2019s scary,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think that what Mr. King does is transcend the genre. In a lot of ways it\u2019s a love story, and it\u2019s about a family trying to stay together under extraordinary duress. Yes, there are elements of horror in it, but I think of it as just a great story, a very compelling drama.\u201d<\/p>\n The horror of the novel comes through in the opera, but in a somewhat different way.<\/p>\n \u201cThe scariness in the opera comes from the unease one feels through the music as the drama of the story progresses,\u201d Moravec said.\u201dThere aren\u2019t a lot of jump scares and things like that. That\u2019s hard to do on stage anyway. But it is faithful to the book in that sense of gnawing dread that processes throughout.\u201d<\/p>\n For Opera Tampa, which is celebrating its 30th season, \u201cThe Shining\u201d is the second entry in a four-opera mainstage season of operas with supernatural stories. The mainstage season started with an elegant staging of Benjamin Britten\u2019s \u201cThe Turn of the Screw.\u201d Mozart\u2019s \u201cThe Magic Flute\u201d is scheduled to open Feb. 27 and the season concludes in April with Giuseppe Verdi\u2019s \u201cMacbeth.\u201d<\/p>\n Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.<\/a><\/p>\n Follow us:\u00a0Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook\u00a0<\/a>|\u00a0BlueSky<\/a><\/p>\n This article appears in Jan. 29 \u2013 Feb. 04<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n \t![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Robert-Weley-Mason-as-Jack-Torrence-in-The-Shining-Photo-by-Cory-Weaver-for-Opera-Parallele-4.jpg\")
Robert Weley Mason as Jack Torrence in \u2018The Shining\u2019 Credit: Cory Weaver \/ Opera Parall\u00e8le<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Robert-Weley-Mason-as-Jack-Torrence-Center-in-The-Shining-Photo-by-Cory-Weaver-for-Opera-Parallele-3.jpeg\")
Robert Wesley Mason as Jack Torrence (cener) in \u2018The Shining.\u2019 Credit: Cory Weaver \/ Opera Parall\u00e8le<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Robert-Weley-Mason-as-Jack-Torrence-center-in-The-Shining-Photo-by-Cory-Weaver-for-Opera-Parallele-2.jpeg\")
Robert Wesley Mason as Jack Torrance (center) in \u2018The Shining.\u2019 Credit: Cory Weaver \/ Opera Parall\u00e8le<\/p>\n