Pride and Prejudice, from Novel to Opera

Kirke Mechem

Nearly fifteen years have elapsed since I began the libretto for my opera on Pride & Prejudice. Now that the first performances with orchestra have been scheduled, Jane Austen fans want to know, “How is the opera different from the novel?” I am embarrassed to admit that I have forgotten many of the changes. I have been so involved with setting my libretto to music, orchestrating it, rehearsing workshops and making several revisions, that I have slipped into the bizarre assumption that my text is the real one. Well, for the opera it is, but of course it could not exist without Jane Austen’s brilliant novel.

That is the reason for this essay. I wanted to remember exactly where and why the opera diverges from the novel. To do this I had the great pleasure of reading the novel again, making notes as I compared it to the libretto. This may interest only performers of the opera, but as I have completed my “research,” I might as well put it into an accessible form. Who knows? It may also interest opera lovers and fans of the novel, and might even help one or two young librettists or composers put together their own operas.

Some people naïvely believe that an opera is simply a musical setting of a play or of scenes from a novel, like fitting music to a poem. It is no such thing. Opera is a mixture of musical and dramatic forms. To begin with, plays — and especially novels — are much too long to be set to music “as is.” It takes about five times as long to sing a paragraph as it does to read it. (Austen’s novel has almost 400 pages; the opera libretto 36.) Many cuts must be made; scenes and characters must be telescoped and locales rearranged. Narration must be turned into dialogue.

First, the bad news: below is a list of the characters and places in Austen’s novel that do not appear in the opera. (That still leaves twelve important characters, quite enough for any opera.)

Two of the Bennet sisters (Kitty and Mary)
One of Bingley’s sisters (Fanny) and her husband (Mr. Hurst)
Sir William and Lady Lucas, parents of Charlotte (Lady L. appears but does not sing.)
Mrs. Phillips (Mrs. Bennet’s sister)
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner (Mrs. Bennet’s brother and his wife)
Miss De Bourgh (Lady Catherine’s daughter)
Colonel Fitzwilliam (Darcy’s cousin)
Georgiana Darcy (Darcy’s sister)
Hill (housekeeper at Longbourn)
Mrs. Reynolds (housekeeper at Pemberley)
Pemberley (though it will be shown in projections as Elizabeth describes her visit there to Jane)
London (which Jane visits and where Wickham and Lydia are found)
Other places: the village of Meryton; the Lucas’s home; the Collins’s parsonage near Rosings; and many others where action briefly takes place.

But the most important omission is Jane Austen herself, as narrator. Her wonderful irony, humor, and insights sparkle on every page. In a sense, every adaptation, whether opera, play or film, is only an imitation. There is only one genuine Pride and Prejudice — the novel.

But some adaptations to other art forms can be fine works in their own right. I am thinking in particular of the beautiful, well-cast 1995 BBC television series of Pride & Prejudice which luxuriated in its stunning scenery and five-hour length. Films of normal length, plays, and certainly operas cannot cover so much ground. But in opera, music can heighten and deepen the personalities and emotions of the characters, adding another dimension to the story. Verdi’s Otello, for instance, I find even more gripping than Shakespeare’s original play. I am not so foolish as to claim such power for my opera, but I can assure the fans of Jane Austen that whatever my failings, they are not the result of my loving her novel any less than they do.

ACT I, Scene 1

The second paragraph of Jane Austen’s novel encouraged me to use a chorus to represent some of her narration: “However little known the feelings or views of such a [single man in possession of a good fortune] may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth [that he must be in want of a wife] is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.” The chorus, accordingly, represents the townspeople and friends of the Bennets. In keeping with operatic tradition and to differentiate the chorus from the soloists, the chorus sings in verse, usually rhymed. Throughout the opera, I use Jane Austen’s own words wherever possible, only making changes necessary for modern comprehension, for brevity, or for musical reasons. I have tried to arrange that the important words and actions occur in about the same order as in the novel.

The first scene of the opera does not begin where the novel does, at the Bennets’ home, Longbourn House. In order to get the action moving quickly, we plunge right into a welcoming ball at Netherfield, Mr. Bingley’s recently acquired mansion. (This is not the ball that takes place at Netherfield in Chapter 18.) After the chorus begins the exposition, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet sing almost verbatim some of their first conversation in the novel. Much of the development of the characters — and of the story — is sung in the first scene as a minuet is danced. When looking for a subject for a new opera, Pride & Prejudice appealed to me because so much of its first half takes place at dances. The main goal of an opera composer (and librettist) is, or should be, to let music tell the story wherever possible. In this case, Austen’s plot requires that a dance — called an “assembly” — be underway. She does not specify what kind of steps are being danced, but as the minuet was popular in England at that time, I have composed an original minuet largely in the style of the period. It has sections in minor keys for Miss Bingley and Mrs. Lucas, and gives the chorus opportunities to express their (Austen’s) feelings about the characters.

An example of a musical form used to enliven what was originally only description is the very short women’s choral piece after Darcy has insulted Elizabeth with the remark, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” Austen describes Elizabeth’s reaction with this one sentence, “She told the story with great spirit among her friends, for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.” That seemed an invitation to show Elizabeth singing a playful chorus with her girl friends, “What’s a handsome man to me?”

Likewise, the ending of Scene 1 is set to the fragment of another dance, as Bingley invites the assembled guests to join in “an old English jig,” which will be developed in the opera’s finale.

ACT I, Scene 2

Jane Austen once said that because she did not know how men spoke to each other when ladies were not present, she would not try to reproduce such dialogue in her novels. That may be the reason a very important conversation in Chapter 6 between Darcy and Bingley — revealing the former’s growing interest in Elizabeth — is rendered only as a single paragraph of description. But I, as a man, do know how men talk to each other, and had no compunction about casting this conversation as a short duet. (It still uses many of Jane Austen’s own words.) This gave me the chance to write warmer music for Darcy than he has had before, music that reappears later in the opera at appropriate moments. These phrases are easy to recognize by their augmented triads — ambiguous chords quite different from the solidity of Darcy’s usual dignified, measured major and minor triads against a pedal note.

Because I have omitted some characters, important words spoken by one of them must be given to another character. For example, it is not Sir Lucas who tries to get Elizabeth to dance with Darcy in this scene, it is Bingley.

Omitting certain scenes has also obliged me to transfer important episodes to other scenes. The longest such segment in the novel is the visit that Jane makes to Netherfield in Chapters 7-12. She catches “a violent cold” and must remain five days. Elizabeth’s extended visit to comfort her gave Austen an opportunity to show all the principal characters together, exposing each one’s flaws and idiosyncrasies with hilarious irony. That scene, however, is so long and discursive that I have moved the most interesting and revealing of its episodes to the private assembly at Longbourn, which is the locale of this second scene.

As an opera-goer I have always loved conversations that were linked to dances yet still moved the action or character development forward — a pleasure that is unique to opera, and much more interesting than recitative or unmelodic arioso. So I expanded this dance scene to include a pair of original gavottes. The gavotte was not typically danced in England at that time, but as a moderate dance in common meter it is well suited to be the background for conversation and a vocal quartet. The quartet is actually two conversations: Darcy and Miss Bingley in the garden, Charlotte and Elizabeth in the house. The two conversations are staggered so that the audience can understand both.

Among the dances moved from Netherfield to Longbourn is a lively Scotch reel, which Darcy vainly asks Elizabeth to dance with him. Later in the same scene she does accept his invitation to dance a stately sarabande (Variations on a Theme by Handel), which enables the two to engage in the verbal sparring — “it’s your turn to say something now” — which in the book does not occur until Chapter 18. Placing it here permits this scene to move toward its climax through a variation in which Mrs. Bennet’s coloratura ostentatiously and presumptuously assures everyone within earshot that not only will Jane and Bingley have a brilliant wedding, but that Elizabeth and Lydia will thereby “meet many other rich men.” (In the novel this occurs at supper.) This is too much for Darcy. Jane Austen has not told us exactly when Darcy decides that he and the Bingleys must return to London to escape this aggressive, uncouth company. But in an opera, we need to see and hear it in music. Accordingly, I turned an old English folk tune into a prescient song that Lydia sings with her mother and all the soldiers, one that is sure to make clear what a gulf exists between Darcy and the Bennet family:

A soldier boy, a soldier boy [sailor boy in the original],
A soldier boy for me.
If ever I get married,
A soldier’s wife I’ll be.

During this song, Darcy and Miss Bingley, after perfunctory farewell bows, lead a reluctant Bingley out of the house, to the deep dejection of Jane and Elizabeth.

ACT I, Scene 3

I have delayed the appearance of one of Austen’s most famous characters until the final scene of Act I. This is the ridiculously pompous clergyman, Mr. Collins. He is one of three characters in the novel that Austen portrayed as unmitigated caricatures. (The others are Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh.) Literary caricatures are a wonderful gift to composers; they give us license to employ the same kind of broad satirical humor in music as the author did with words. Collins’s self-important yet obsequious manners are hilariously displayed in the novel far beyond what we have time for on stage. Still, his contribution to the main story — his proposal of marriage to Elizabeth — is quite enough to mark him as one of the great comic characters in literature.

In the novel Wickham is dealt with before Mr. Collins, but in the opera he appears after Collins has proposed to Elizabeth to provide time in the same scene for Lydia to have heard of Charlotte’s engagement to Collins. The back story of Wickham and Darcy has had to be considerably shortened, and the ball at Netherfield described in Chapter 18 has been omitted, as many of its events were shown in the previous scene.

Mr. Collins enters to the music of an ancient English folksong, “The Vicar of Bray,” a satirical tale of a clergyman who quite easily changes his doctrine according to the political winds of the day. I have used only a fragment of this tune; most of Mr. Collins’s lines are delivered to the accompaniment of various clichés of operatic sanctimony, many of them employing the harp. (Those high-minded readers who object to musical clichés will also have to object to the dozens of pompous verbal clichés Austen puts into the mouth of Mr. Collins.) The transfer of his matrimonial intentions from Elizabeth to Charlotte must be done even more quickly in the opera; news of their engagement comes from Lydia instead of from Charlotte herself the next day.

This news, together with a letter from Miss Bingley confirming that her brother will never return to Netherfield, precipitates the crisis that brings Act I to a close. In the novel, this letter arrives at the beginning of Volume II. But operas, like plays, need such scenes of crisis and despair to bring down the curtain at intermission.

In this final scene of Act I, when Jane is faced with the desertion of her lover, Austen gives her these words: “He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before.” This is so strikingly similar to one of my favorite Sara Teasdale poems, “Let It Be Forgotten,” that I decided to let Jane sing that short poem to music I adapted from a piece I had composed many years before. (Could Teasdale have been inspired by Austen’s heroine, or is the poem’s emotional content so common that thousands of heartbroken lovers could express themselves in similar, though not such poetic words?)

The awful effect of Miss Bingley’s letter and Charlotte’s “odious betrayal” creates a hullabaloo of outrage at Longbourn. Each of the four women has a different view of these events, giving the composer an opportunity for a suitably flamboyant quartet to end the act.

ACT II, Scene 1

The first chapter of Austen’s Volume II, which discusses the events just described, contains some of her most profound insights into “the inconsistency of all human characters.” Elizabeth’s comments on Jane’s naïve acceptance of Miss Bingley’s hypocritical and dissembling letter are as wise today as they were then. But jewels of this nature are better left to the novel, where readers may savor them at their leisure.

The opera must omit the visit to Longbourn by Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, nor can it make room for Jane’s six-week visit to them in London. In doing so, we pass over the treachery of Miss Bingley, who caused Jane to believe that Bingley was in love with Darcy’s sister. We find out the untruth of this ruse later in the opera; for now we must concentrate on Elizabeth and Darcy.

The first scene of Act II takes place at Rosings, the vast estate of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Darcy’s aunt. Charlotte, now Mrs. Collins, has invited Elizabeth to stay for six weeks at the parsonage. In the novel Darcy closely observes Elizabeth playing the piano. For logistical reasons the operatic scene takes place in the garden, not in the drawing room, so Elizabeth is playing cards instead.

The main business of this scene is Darcy’s surprising proposal to Elizabeth and her angry rejection of him. I have omitted his visits to the parsonage and have plotted to send the two on a stroll in the park and garden. When Darcy finally bursts forth with his declaration of love it is with the exact four sentences Jane Austen gave him in the novel. Unfortunately for the librettist, however, she then employs two paragraphs of description, rather than dialogue, to convey his emotions and thoughts. This forces the librettist to translate these descriptions into the heated words of Darcy’s most important aria. Austen is more helpful in giving us the actual words of Elizabeth’s indignant refusal, though for musical reasons some rearrangement and paraphrasing was necessary.

But please note: both the librettist and composer are enormously grateful to Jane Austen for giving us such a powerful and passionate scene to work with.

ACT II, Scene 2

Almost the entire content of this scene is devoted to Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth and her reaction to it. The opera can conjure this in a way that is not possible in a novel — that is, the two actions take place more or less simultaneously. It is a week later; Elizabeth is back at Longbourn, not at Rosings where in the novel Darcy wrote his letter. The lights go down; a spotlight on a desk at stage right shows Darcy writing (singing) the letter, while a messenger delivers it to Elizabeth in her garden at stage left, where she reads and reacts to it point by disconcerting point. This is the pivotal scene in their relationship. After vigorous denials, Elizabeth must admit the truth about Wickham and she gradually comes to see that Darcy misunderstood Jane’s feeling toward Bingley. In her principal aria, she realizes that her own pride and prejudices have been shameful — “Till this moment, I never knew myself” — even though she cannot pardon Darcy’s contempt for her family.

Combining the writing and reading of the letter into one scene obviously saves time, but more significant is that in a duet the singers can musically dramatize the conflict with more passion and immediacy.

ACT II, Scene 3

It is the following summer. Elizabeth has just returned home from a tour to the Midlands. Its high point, as all Pride and Prejudice fans know, was a visit to Pemberley, Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire, where Darcy himself — contrary to what Elizabeth had been told — was at home. How can I justify the opera’s omission of that famous scene at Pemberley?

Four chapters of the novel are devoted to the visit. It is a long and quite diffuse part of the story, which for the opera would require several new characters and a new stage-set; it is also spread over a great deal of time. Yet only one really important point emerges from this visit — Elizabeth discovers that Darcy has transformed himself from haughty and reserved to tender and informal. This can effectively be conveyed by Elizabeth to Jane — and to the audience — at their home, with the help of a projection showing what she describes. And please remember: if the opera were to include the entire story of the novel, or even as much as the five-hour BBC film does, we would end up with a four-evening cycle of Wagnerian length.

Elizabeth has had to return suddenly from Pemberley because of the news that Lydia has run away from Brighton with Wickham. The latter half of this scene reveals the details of this appalling affair, and finally, the news that the couple has been found in London, and will be made to marry. Mr. Bennet has been in the city and assumes that his brother-in-law Gardiner had to pay Wickham an enormous sum. The only change from the novel is that Mr. Bennet brings home this news instead of it coming later in an express letter from Mr. Gardiner.

ACT II, Scene 4

Lydia, despite the disgrace she has brought upon her family, represents only a sub-plot in the opera. I omit most of the emotional discussions (Chapters 8-9 of Volume 3) about her wedding to Wickham and the banishment of the couple to the far north of England. Our final scene begins at Longbourn with a party to celebrate the engagement of Jane to Bingley, who with Darcy’s blessing has returned to his Netherfield mansion. But Darcy’s behavior is again reserved and somewhat distant, leading Elizabeth to fear that he could never tie himself to such a disreputable family, a member of which now is the man he so justly hates. Brother-in-law of Wickham? Impossible!

The crucial difference from the novel in this scene is the manner in which Elizabeth learns that it was Darcy, not her Uncle Gardiner, who found the wayward couple in London and bribed Wickham to marry Lydia. I saw no reason to bring Lydia and Wickham back into the opera, nor to include the long letter from Mrs. Gardiner about Darcy’s part in the transaction. For the opera, Darcy’s help is just as plausibly revealed by Lady Catherine during her preposterous visit to threaten Elizabeth against any relationship with Darcy. In the novel, Lady Catherine already knows about Lydia’s disgrace, and has heard rumors of a connection between Elizabeth and Darcy, so why could she not also have discovered her nephew’s part in the rescue of Lydia?

The opera also accelerates Lady Catherine’s offstage meeting with Darcy. After leaving Longbourn, she has met him on the road and complains of Elizabeth’s scandalous refusal to disown the rumors connecting the couple. This gives Darcy the hope that Elizabeth’s feelings have changed and the courage to risk another proposal.

I am sorry that more time could not be devoted to the final flowering of the love between Jane and Bingley, but I have tried to show enough of it to satisfy opera-goers, most of whom will be eager to see the end of the Darcy/Elizabeth story. Jane Austen’s portrayal of their final reconciliation is very beautiful. It cannot be as extensive in the opera, of course, but I have given it my most beautiful music. And I like to think (flatter myself?) that opera does have an advantage in rendering the finale of such a story as this. A celebration by a large group of people is a natural and wonderful assignment for music. I have built the final pages around a development of the fugal subject from the opening scene and of many of the other melodies first heard there. And it also seemed fitting to repeat Jane Austen’s famous observation at the beginning of both novel and opera: that a single young man with wealth of his own must be in want of a wife.