Has There Ever Been. . .?

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A Novel written with a clear intention of being a musical? Showboat seemed destined for Broadway, and Ferber was placed in the right "set" to guarantee a quick transit from book to stage? But it doesn't include the song lyrics or a list of numbers if it were to be an "anthology" musical. Perhaps Roddy Doyle's The Commitments. A wonderful movie musical put together from golden oldies (as I recall). My own Troll of Surewould Forest had as its premise a world in which people, singly and in groups, broke into song --but it's never been staged that way, or any way, alas. Have there ever been "novelizations" of musicals as there have of so many movies? Charlie and I tried to get a contract for a novelization of Tosca. There was an Italian movie based on the Sardou melodrama that was the basis for the opera. I saw it when my lessons at the British Academy in Florence had reached their high point and I think I may have understood a good half of the dialogue! Now I am clueless when I watch the RAI newsprograms on tv. Gearing operas down into musical comedies has been done a lot: Carmen Jones, Rent, Aida. And I suppose in the heyday of opera a lot of writers deliberately baited their plots with the opera stage in mind. But Ferber aside, have writers of our time done so?

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