(Michael Paulson’s article appeared in The New York Times, 8/2; via KS.)
It’s looking like a Buñuel bonanza in New York: The American musical-theater composer Stephen Sondheim and the British opera composer Thomas Adès have both written adaptations of the Surrealist Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s 1962 dark comedy “The Exterminating Angel,” and both are hoping for productions in New York in late 2017.
The Adès opera, also called “The Exterminating Angel,” had its premiere last week at the Salzburg Festival in Austria to strongly positive reviews, and it will travel to the Metropolitan Opera in the fall of 2017.
Mr. Sondheim has been working for several years with the playwright David Ives (“Venus in Fur”) on a musical based on two Buñuel films, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel.” In remarks on Saturday at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., he said he now hopes to finish the work so it can be presented at the Public Theater, an Off Broadway nonprofit, at the same time as the work by Mr. Adès.