Stewart Copeland is known all over the world as the co-funder and drummer for The Police, one of the most successful and innovative bands in rock history. By the time The Police disbanded, in 1983, Stewart Copeland was already established as a composer of film scores, and in the following years, he has become an accomplished and prolific composer of film scores, operas, and ballets. The present paper offers an analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart, one of Edgar Allan Poe’s story adapted by Copeland into an opera. Focusing on the inter-semiotic transformation occurring between prose and opera, which originates a completely new work of art in the target genre, Copeland’s work has to be viewed as a ‘transmutation’ (following the term suggested by Umberto Eco in 2003) rather than an ‘adaptation’, which overshadows critical discussions of adaptation generally dealing with the idea of the original versus the reproduction and often permeated by the problem of fidelity.
THE TELL TALE HEART… OF MINE: POE TOLD BY STEWART COPELAND
Paola Attolino
2017
Abstract
Stewart Copeland is known all over the world as the co-funder and drummer for The Police, one of the most successful and innovative bands in rock history. By the time The Police disbanded, in 1983, Stewart Copeland was already established as a composer of film scores, and in the following years, he has become an accomplished and prolific composer of film scores, operas, and ballets. The present paper offers an analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart, one of Edgar Allan Poe’s story adapted by Copeland into an opera. Focusing on the inter-semiotic transformation occurring between prose and opera, which originates a completely new work of art in the target genre, Copeland’s work has to be viewed as a ‘transmutation’ (following the term suggested by Umberto Eco in 2003) rather than an ‘adaptation’, which overshadows critical discussions of adaptation generally dealing with the idea of the original versus the reproduction and often permeated by the problem of fidelity.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
