Olga Beloborodova
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Opera as adaptation
György Kurtág’s Samuel Beckett - Fin de partie, scènes et monologues
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Rather than being an addition to the already copious literature on the subject of Beckett and music, the present chapter analyses György Kurtág’s 2018 opera Samuel Beckett: Fin de partie, scènes et monologues as a particularly interesting case study to examine the relationship between the original and the adaptation. To investigate this general issue, the chapter considers Kurtág’s intention to remain faithful to the text as much as possible, despite the need to transpose the play into a completely different genre and medium. In particular, it takes issue with John Bryant’s ‘fluid text’ principle, which argues for the inclusion of all forms of adaptation (whether authorial or not) into the work’s genesis. The detailed account of the libretto highlights Kurtág’s subtle yet significant additions to Beckett’s original text, mostly for the purpose of enhancing the dramatic effect and fleshing out covert intertextual allusions. Both these interventions go against the Beckettian spirit that the great composer holds in high regard, the stance that is corroborated by his interest in the manuscripts of Fin de partie. Taking into account Kurtág’s ‘un-Beckettian’ libretto and seemingly unorthodox scenography, the question the chapter attempts to answer is whether there are compelling arguments to consider Kurtág’s opera a ‘fluid text’ and thus to implicitly treat Samuel Beckett as a posthumous co-author of his play’s transgeneric and transmedial adaptation.

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Beckett’s afterlives

Adaptation, remediation, appropriation

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