Charlotte Salomon's Life? or Theater?- Adapting Autobiography and Visual Art for a New Canadian Opera

Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943),a German-Jewish born artist created a large body of work based on the events of her life. She depicted her family and community through a series of drawings and paintings that comprise 1,325 sheets of paper. The work is theatrical in its use of recurring characters, dialogue and continuous story-line. In the spring of 2003, a new Canadian opera based on the life and work of Charlotte Salomon will be presented in Toronto by The Queen of Puddings. James Rolfe, composer of "Beatrice Chancey" and other works has composed the score, and filmmaker Jeremy Podesawa has written the libretto. This paper will explore the effectiveness of this new opera in relation to the original source,the methods of collaboration between the creative team involved and the workshop process of the work. The paper will also look at the success of adapting a work based on visual art, recent world history and auto-biography. What responsibilities do the adaptors have to their source material and how do their choices accomodate a different medium.