Turning a Ghoulish Children’s Book Into a Grand Opera

LONDON — In a dusty, overheated rehearsal room near London Bridge, things were getting ghoulish. On a mocked-up stage set, a soprano wearing a mask with black buttons over her eyeholes was slamming a fake hand into a door, trying to make it look as if it had been severed. Around a table, two “magic consultants” were huddled around a miniature toy theater, debating what sort of fake mice would freak audiences out the most. Eerie, discordant chords drifted from another room: A trio was practicing. “You’re doomed,” they seemed to be singing.

It was the fourth week of rehearsals for the Royal Opera’s new adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Gothic children’s novella, “Coraline,” and no bumps in the night were being left to chance. The seven singers had memorized Mark-Anthony Turnage’s angular, complex score and had worked out where to stand and walk; today was all about making sure that the supernatural transformations required by Rory Mullarkey’s libretto happened where they were meant to. The piece presented an unusual number of challenges, sighed Aletta Collins, the director: Never before had she been required to work out how to throw someone through a mirror onstage, as happens at the climax of the action, let alone how one might recruit a mouse orchestra, which pops up in Act 1.

“We’re doing our level best,” she said.

In the 16 years since it was published, “Coraline,” a tale of a plucky girl who falls into a parallel universe and battles forces from the dark side, has developed a passionate fan base, selling more than 1 million copies. In 2009 there came a stop-motion movie, and there have been video game and comic book adaptations, too — even an off-Broadway musical. Propelled by this, and by the astonishing success of other stories, such as the “Sandman” series and “American Gods,” Gaiman has become something of a cult figure, not just among the comic-con crowd but in mainstream literary circles, too. Even so, the idea of making a fantasy novel into an avant-garde opera still seems like a leap — and not only because of the mice. But then Turnage has always had eclectic taste: His last opera, which had its debut seven years ago, focused on the wayward life and tranquilizer-fueled death of Anna Nicole Smith, and his orchestral and instrumental works have gleefully referenced Miles Davis, the paintings of Francis Bacon and Beyoncé's “Single Ladies.”

“If someone says you can’t do this, or shouldn’t do this, then I think it’s a very good reason to do it,” Turnage said in an interview. “It has to provoke me, otherwise I get bored.”

Although Gaiman hasn’t been directly involved in this new version — earlier this month he finished shooting a screen adaptation of his novel “Good Omens,” written with Terry Pratchett — Turnage and Mullarkey have had plenty to play with. The novel begins when little Coraline Jones discovers that a bricked-up door in the apartment she’s just moved into is a portal to a nightmarish “other world.” Trapped behind the door, she finds a figure with black buttons for eyes who coos that she’s Coraline’s “other mother” and promises her anything she desires, if only she agrees to stay “for ever and always.” Coraline’s journey home to her real parents is not only a coming-of-age story but also a mythic quest.

A powerful, self-determined heroine, Coraline is more than a match for operatic heroines such as Leonore in Beethoven’s “Fidelio” or Rosina from Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” The role is shared in the new production by sopranos Mary Bevan and Robyn Allegra Parton.

“She’s such a strong female character,” Turnage said. “She’s powerful; she’s going to solve these things. I’ve got a 7-year-old daughter. She’s too young to read the book, but she saw the film, and she was very taken with Coraline.”

Although the opera, like the novel, is aimed at young audiences — Turnage has dedicated it to his daughter and his youngest son — it goes to some genuinely disturbing places. The sense that evil lurks around every corner is palpable; there are heavy hints, too, of abuse in the plotline of parent-like figures who bribe a child to love them. While critics have often compared the book to Lewis Carroll, Gaiman’s universe is arguably closer to David Lynch or Stephen King in its atmosphere of suspenseful, what-lies-beneath horror.

“I wanted to write about how people who have your best interests at heart may not always pay you the kind of attention that you’d like,” Gaiman said in a statement. “And people who pay a lot of attention to you may not always have your best interests at heart.”

Collins agreed that, despite its fairy-tale qualities, this narrative is not for the fainthearted. “The story is: You can have anything you want in the whole wide world, as long as you let me sew buttons into your eyes,” she said.

Turnage clearly relishes the material’s otherworldly side; the score, written for 15 musicians, is astringent and occasionally violent, bringing to mind chamber pieces such as “On All Fours” (1983) and “Blood on the Floor” (1996). But “Coraline” does allow audiences some moments of fun. The composer said he enjoyed coming up with Broadwayish music for the character of Mr. Bobo, an eccentric old man who dwells in the apartment above Coraline and conducts the mouse orchestra. Two retired actresses who live in the apartment beneath, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, are portrayed as divas of a certain age who issue Cassandra-like pronouncements about fate in high-voltage coloratura.

“The fantasy element is so heightened,” Turnage said. “Completely operatic.” The Royal Opera has staged eight new operas for young people and families in the past five years, among them Julian Philips’ “How the Whale Became” (2013), based on children’s stories by Ted Hughes, and Adriano Adewale’s “Hatch” (2017), billed as a “sensory experience for children aged 2 to 5.” The profusion indicates how seriously the company is trying to demolish the perceived barriers that surround the art form and to attract new and more diverse audiences.

The company is under continual pressure to justify its governmental subsidy of around $33 million annually — the highest of any arts institution in Britain — and has invested in co-productions with theater and dance companies around the country. It also runs school workshops and outreach projects in towns outside London, including in some of the region’s most deprived areas.

Turnage, who grew up in Essex, not far from London, and was the first member of his family to get a college education, said he hoped audiences for “Coraline” would come from all walks of life. The opera world sometimes wasn’t as outward-facing as it should be, he suggested.

“A lot of opera directors are making opera for other opera directors, and quite a few opera composers are writing for their peer group,” he said.

Although “Coraline” has been in development for more than four years, both he and Collins said that the theme of a young woman standing up for herself against the odds had acquired particular topicality in the context of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. The classical world has experienced plentiful rumors about sexual harassment, along with some high-profile firings — notably of conductors Charles Dutoit and James Levine, who was pushed out of the Met earlier this month.

Turnage said that, although some things had improved over his years in the business, “I’m acutely aware of women working in the opera world and the way that they’re marginalized, and how tough it is. Everybody knows this.”

He added he was proud that, in addition to a strong female lead, the production also has a largely female creative team, led by Collins and conductor Sian Edwards. “The world is changing,” Turnage said.

He expressed hope that “Coraline” offered a path forward, in its way. He said he was inspired by a quotation from G.K. Chesterton that Gaiman uses as the epigraph of the book: “Fairy tales are more than true: Not because they tell us that dragons exist but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

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“Coraline”

March 27 through April 7 at the Barbican Theater in London; roh.org.uk.