Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Mary Bevan rehearsing the role of Coraline in a new Royal Opera House adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book.
‘It’s about kids keeping their chins up’ … Mary Bevan rehearsing the role of Coraline in the Royal Opera House adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved book. Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey/ROH
‘It’s about kids keeping their chins up’ … Mary Bevan rehearsing the role of Coraline in the Royal Opera House adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved book. Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey/ROH

Neil Gaiman on Coraline the terrifying opera: 'Being brave means being scared'

This article is more than 6 years old

The writer’s gripping tale of a young girl trapped in a button-eyed world has been turned into a macabre opera. Did they tone down the horror? Our writer meets composer Mark-Anthony Turnage as she goes backstage

‘Fairytales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” This is how Neil Gaiman prefaced Coraline, his 2002 novel for children, attributing the quote to GK Chesterton. But, in characteristic Gaiman style, he has since admitted he largely made it up in a hurried paraphrase of something Chesterton once wrote that is less catchy.

Never mind, the sentiment stands. Coraline has been turned into an opera by composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, with a libretto by Rory Mullarkey, and the dragon-beater with us in the rehearsal room today is soprano Robyn Allegra Parton, who is wearing yellow wellies and an expression of exasperation at the shortcomings of her mother, a look any parent will recognise. Parton is one of two singers sharing the title role; the part is too gruelling to sing twice in one day.

The action takes place in parallel worlds: the flat in which Coraline lives with her too-busy parents, and an eerily similar one next door, accessed via a previously unnoticed door. Sitting in on the rehearsal, I watch as Parton crawls through the door into the Other Flat – only to find Kitty Whately, the singer playing her mother. But now Whately is the Other Mother, smiling relentlessly, ready to offer Coraline “whatever you want in the whole wide world!” And she is now wearing something akin to goggles: her eyes are covered with large black buttons sewn with fierce red thread. How Whateley can see through them is anyone’s guess.

Other Mother (voiced by Teri Hatcher) and Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) in the film version.

The button eyes are a macabre touch that places Gaiman’s story firmly in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales tradition. And there’s more than a touch of Hansel and Gretel in Coraline’s themes of parental abandonment, an initially appealing but evil mother figure, and a brave child who conquers her fears to win the day. “I’d wanted to write a story for my daughters,” says Gaiman in the introduction to the 10th-anniversary edition, “that told them something I wished I’d known when I was a boy: that being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t scared. Being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyway.”

Gaiman’s book verges on classic status and Henry Selick’s 2009 stop-motion animated film brought this tale of a lonely but resourceful 11-year-old to an even wider audience. But its familiarity is a blessing and a curse. The sense of ownership people feel towards a favourite story means they will come to the show with fixed ideas. Couple that with the fact that adapting a book for the stage always involves cutting and condensing, and you risk infuriating what should be your biggest fans.

Chris Riddell’s illustration of Coraline’s Other Parents for Neil Gaiman’s book. Photograph: Bloomsbury

Gaiman, however, is relaxed. “Everything changes when you move from medium to medium,” he emails from South Africa, where he is working on a screen version of Good Omens, the 1990 novel he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett. “Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes you sigh, sometimes you urged it to happen.”

Turnage and Mullarkey have omitted the aloof, sardonic cat who is a sounding board for Coraline’s thoughts and eventually helps her rescue her real parents from the clutches of the Other Mother. “This is the sort of thing people get very hung up about,” says Turnage. “But the cat has been replaced by the orchestra, really. You have to take a lot out, but you put it back in different ways. ”

It is a point echoed by Mary Bevan, the soprano sharing the role with Parton. “In the film, the action happens around Coraline. In the opera, she sings about it. So it’s not as if you’re just seeing a replay of the film. That would be boring.”

The world Coraline enters through the mysterious door is uncannily like her own, except for the button eyes – but its music isn’t the same. Not exactly. “The material repeats,” says Turnage, “but it’s slightly stranger – more sickly, a little more yucky. There are quite a few waltzes. They’re a bit more distorted and odd, not very pleasant. It’s more clean and straightforward in the real house, with her real mum and dad.”

This is Turnage’s first full-length chamber opera since he made his name as an angry young composer with Greek 30 years ago. Coraline has an orchestra of only 15 players, a departure from what has become his full-orchestral comfort zone – but, as he explains, “the point is that should be practical” – it’s a piece designed to travel.

Alexander Robin Baker and Robyn Allegra Parton in rehearsal for Coraline. Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey/ROH

Moreover, this is his first time writing for a family audience - the opera is being advertised as suitable for anybody eight or older. Is it any easier producing work for children? “It’s harder,” says Gaiman, “and you need to be more aware of what you’re doing. Adults are more forgiving and more willing to put up with being bored than children are.”

That doesn’t have to mean compromise though. Turnage is scathing about the idea of pitching it at the kid who’s got the shortest attention span. “Nonsense!” They all agree: what is really needed is not simplicity, or brevity, but directness of communication (although, at 90 minutes, Coraline is reasonably concise).

The performances won’t have surtitles, , but director Aletta Collins is confident that the words and meaning will come across. “You do it as if it were Mozart or Janáček – you go for the clarity.” Translations of the libretto are already being made for when her staging travels to co-producing theatres in Sweden, Germany and France.

While Coraline is a children’s story, it’s a gloriously terrifying one, even – or perhaps especially – for adult readers. Have the opera’s creators felt the need to dilute any of its creepiest aspects? Absolutely not, says Turnage. “There is a school of thought that says you should protect children from scary stories. I think that’s ridiculous. It’s what growing up is all about.”

In any case, this is an opera with a message – and the scary stuff is absolutely necessary, because the message has to do with conquering fear itself. Bevan says the ending gives her goosebumps, while Collins talks about it like a woman on a mission. “Especially now, when there’s so much talk about what the future for our young women is, to be working on a piece that ends with a young woman saying, ‘I can open any door, I’m not scared any more, I’m ready’ – that is thrilling.”

But Coraline is not only for girls, she stresses. “It is about young people keeping their chin up, navigating their way to the next part of their life. This is a piece that celebrates that, encourages that, and absolutely confirms it’s possible.”

Coraline is at the Barbican, London, 29 March-7 April. Box office: 020-7304 4000.


Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed