Dreaming of a Twin Peaks Opera Cycle
I've been getting into opera lately which has lead me to daydream about what movies or whatever I would adapt into an opera if I could do anything. I've got Peaks on my mind and realized that the entire soapy saga could graft onto Wagner's Ring Cycle.
You already have Badalamenti's modern use of leitmotifs and Lynch's immersive sound design as the series' spine. A lot of the existing music could be adapted and expanded upon to support an epic the likes of which American theater has never seen.
If you don't know, The Ring Cycle is a multi-generational epic made up of a one-act prologue and three full length operas performed over multiple days. Here's how I see The Twin Peaks Cycle shaking out:
Prologue: Fire Walk with Me (in the Das Rheingold spot) - Opening on "Part 8"'s Creation Myth, the atomic tear would be the inverted "World-Chord" represented as a dissonant drone flowing into Fire Walk with Me's chamber drama. The music would be really overpowering and abrasive, the Pink Room scene especially. And importantly the series will have its own Ring theme.
Opera 1: It Is Happening Again - A streamlined summation of the original series compressing the six Lynch directed episodes into a three act arc.
Act I is all about the discovery of Laura's body using the mourning ensemble of the town as a Greek chorus. Includes "Audrey's Dance", the bottle breaking exercise as a percussive guessing game, and ending on Cooper's rocking Red Room dream.
Act II is essentially a straight adaptation of "Lonely Souls" climaxing with Maddy's murder depicted as a disturbing slow motion minor key ballet into the tenor bass of the Giant's "It is happening again" with the chorus emotionally singing "The World Spins."
Act III needs some invented bridge between Act II and the nightmare world of "Beyond Life and Death." Definitely Audrey in the Annie role. The Black Lodge is all extreme, high register dissonance.
Opera 2: Meanwhile... (the Siegfried of the Cycle) would adapt the Cooper storyline from The Return. While he becomes Dougie, the show transforms into a Mozartian comic opera. Act III would check back in with Twin Peaks' chorus all at once before the climactic showdown ending in the uneasy "We live inside a dream" aria.
Opera 3: Two Birds with One Stone would of course be a sparse and eerie finale looping back into the Prologue before traversing the bad vibes of Odessa ending with Laura's world-swallowing scream, an operatic vocalise that cuts out the lights and leaves the entire house in total, crushing darkness.
Basically it would be this century's American theatrical masterpiece. All that's needed is permission from Frost and an enormous amount of time and money. A girl can dream. Thank you for reading.
