The Shining

Stephen King’s The Shining is a contemporary masterpiece of horror, best known to world audiences through Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1980 film featuring Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duval. The premise—a caretaker and his family overseeing an isolated luxury hotel deep in the Colorado wilderness during winter months and the sensational madness that ensues—creates magnificent potential for an operatic treatment. Librettist Mark Campbell and composer Paul Moravec teamed with director/co-conceiver Eric Simonson and The Shining had its premiere at the Minnesota Opera in 2016. The work has been revived on several occasions since and was felt to be a particular good fit for the Atlanta Opera’s Fall “Thriller Three” (previously “Discovery”) series that dates back nearly a decade. The Shining, along with Verdi’s Rigoletto and Shapiro’s Frankenstein were deemed frightening similar by Artistic Director Tomer Zvulum. According to Zvulum, the leading character associated with each of the works was “horribly flawed,...