Pride and Prejudice

Excerpted from Kirke Mechem's Preface to the Score

“An OPERA on Pride and Prejudice?” I’ve been asked. “After all the films, plays and books, who needs an operatic version?” I can answer this question only with a more difficult question: “Why has no one ever written an opera on Pride and Prejudice before?”

It is the most beloved novel in the English language; it has strong and varied characters, humor, opportunities for dancing, for ensembles and scenic beauty, and above all, it is built around one of the most fascinating love stories of all time. These are the hallmarks of opera. While films have the technique to open up action in ways the stage cannot, opera can more powerfully convey the passions and nuances of human emotions. The language of love is music.

The score for Pride and Prejudice is tonal and melodic, but because the characters and situations are multifarious, so is the music. Like the novel, the opera changes gradually from comedy to poignant drama. Act I is full of gaiety, irony, humor and flirtation. Act II is deeper in feeling, suspense, and the possibility of tragedy before things get sorted out. It comes close to being a “grand opera.” It uses chorus and dancers and sometimes calls for a split stage, i.e., there is occasionally action in both the house and the garden at the same time.

To compress 400 pages of words into two hours of music is daunting. The 1995 television version ran over five hours. My project was so formidable, in fact, that I told no one about it until I had written several scenarios, gradually whittling them down to workable size, then trying out several provisional librettos until I thought I had achieved one short enough to leave room for music. And now that the work is finished, I tremble that hard-core Pride and Prejudice fans — there are millions of them — will not forgive me. I apologize in advance for the necessary cuts, the telescoping of scenes and characters and the occasional rearrangement of locales: in the opera there are only three Bennet daughters, not five; scene 1 does not begin at the Bennets’ house nor at the first assembly. In order to get the action moving quickly, we plunge right into the ball at Netherfield.

I have tried to arrange all this so that the important words and actions occur in about the same order as in the novel. I use Jane Austen’s own words wherever possible, only making changes necessary for modern comprehension or in the interest of brevity, or for musical reasons. I also put some of the choral passages into verse. (The chorus represents the townspeople and friends of the Bennets.)

Finally, I want to assure fans of the novel that I love it as much as they do and have tried my best to remain true to its characters and its story. I sorely regret the cuts I had to make. But please remember: only Wagner could get away with five-hour operas.

— K. M.