Abstract: This Master’s Thesis analyses Charles Gounod’s operatic adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The theoretical part introduces the theory of adaptation with a particular focus on operatic adaptations; it then moves on to three modes of adaptations, and discusses the correlation between adaptation and plagiarism. In the second chapter, the thesis identifies and interprets the sources for Shakespeare’s and Gounod’s works, introduces the librettists Jules Barbier and Michael Carré and discusses the background of the period of the operatic production. The main purpose of this thesis is to identify and study stylistic correlation between Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and the libretto of Roméo et Juliette. The thesis further establishes whether the librettists make certain themes from the play more or less prominent. For this purpose, three passages were selected for the contrastive microstructural analysis of the play and its operatic adaptation in the final chapter of this thesis. The intent is to establish whether librettists managed to preserve Shakespeare’s most salient stylistic elements as well as other textual characteristics that have an impact on the interpretative potential of the adaptation.Keywords: play, opera, libretto, music, adaptation, microstructural analysisPublished in DKUM: 15.10.2018; Views: 1158; Downloads: 149 Full text (914,05 KB)
