{"id":37096,"date":"2016-06-01T20:10:48","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T00:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=37096"},"modified":"2016-06-01T20:14:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T00:14:45","slug":"sidebar-rocking-horse-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2016\/06\/01\/sidebar-rocking-horse-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"SIDEBAR | From Story to Score: Bringing The Rocking Horse Winner\u2019s Hero to the Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tapestry
Tapestry Opera: Rocking Horse Winner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Musical Toronto\u2019s John Terauds rightly joins<\/a> many other critics in unequivocally praising Tapestry Opera\u2019s world premiere production of Rocking Horse Winner, based on the short story by D.H. Lawrence. Each of the reviewers have had to offer a thumbnail characterization of Lawrence\u2019s protagonist, Paul, the son of a mother who is as impoverished financially as she is emotionally, who carries within her the secret that \u201cat the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody\u201d, least of all for her son. \u00a0Two reviewers describe him as being autistic, while Terauds states<\/a> that he is \u201cdevelopmentally challenged\u201d. \u00a0They draw these descriptions from interviews with the librettist Anna Chatterton and composer Gareth Williams, but the character is not described that way in the program or the libretto.<\/p>\n

In Lawrence\u2019s story, Paul\u2019s precise age is not mentioned, but it is clear that he is on the early edge of puberty,\u00a0 passing through the transition from the domain of the nursery and the domination of the governess at the beginning of the\u00a0 narrative, to the zone of the study and the tutelage of a tutor who prepares him to depart for Eton.\u00a0 The developmental point is critical because it makes Paul\u2019s frenzied ritual of rocking on his hobby horse seem that much more about taming troublesome appetites, whether it is his the adults\u2019 love of\u00a0 \u2018filthy lucre\u2019 or his own desire to attain the attribute of \u2018lucky\u2019, his mother\u2019s ideal state.<\/p>\n

In Lawrence\u2019s description, Paul\u2019s \u201cbig blue eyes\u201d (with) \u201can uncanny cold fire in them\u201d grow colder and more uncanny as the pressure on him to identify the winners of the horse races increases.\u00a0 Lawrence\u2019s designation of Paul as uncanny indicates the author\u2019s understanding that the standard, available human categories are inadequate and irrelevant when it comes to explaining Paul.\u00a0 But it is clear that he is a child possessed by a need for love,\u00a0 the deprivation of which eventually kills him.<\/p>\n

By reconceptualizing Paul as an autistic young man,\u00a0 the collaborators were able to cast the uncanny child as a young adult tenor instead of a boy soprano, which would have been the obvious choice. \u00a0The device is both ingenious and problematic.\u00a0 It intensifies and deepens the mother\u2019s dilemma,\u00a0 making her unrelenting tenseness and emotional parsimony that much more understandable and forgivable, and is profoundly true to the spirit of Lawrence\u2019s story.\u00a0 But Paul\u2019s deep concern for his mother\u2019s happiness and his insatiable desire for her love are not evocative of the withdrawn and disconnected aspects of autism, and the sight of a grown man in underwear \u201cmadly surging on the rocking horse\u2019, as Lawrence describes it, to a climax, \u00a0is graphically sexual.<\/p>\n

This does not undermine the success of this production at all,\u00a0 nor are the creators obligated to recreate Lawrence\u2019s characters in minute precision.\u00a0 It only illustrates the challenges that face collaborators who chose to transfer a complex narrative that consists of words that create images in the readers\u2019 heads to the stage.\u00a0 It would be very satisfying to see this opera again, with a boy soprano playing the part so that the poignancy of a child who is trying to be the parent to his mother is that much more underscored.<\/p>\n

To read our full review of Tapestry Opera’s Rocking Horse Winner, see here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a supplement to our recent review of Tapestry Opera’s Rocking Horse Winner, Robin Roger offers some ideas as to central artistic decision collaborators made by making the protagonist autistic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":37100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5723,4967,43],"tags":[6164,4699],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/06\/website-RHW-with-title-1038x576.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-9Ek","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37096"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37104,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37096\/revisions\/37104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37096"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=37096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}