One of the more amiable and advanced members of
Another Messageboard posits questions about the cross-over between the genres of Science Fiction and Opera.
Since opera formerly fulfilled the social role now filled by cinema, it's not surprising that there might be more examples of crossover than at first supposed :) Remove the requirement for space travel (by no means an essential ingredient of sci-fi) and the number of works set in strange and foreign worlds quickly tots-up. Baroque audiences were greatly given to this kind of escapism - especially if it offered a chance for a lot of wacky costumes and exciting stage machinery :) The French repertoire has any number of pieces set in mythical worlds and kingdoms... Rameau's
Les Boréades and
Les Paladins. Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' is already a prototypical sci-fi piece, and thus the (many) operatic versions have risen to the challenge... Purcell, Ades, etc. Cavalli's Calisto is transformed into a star at the end. Handel's "magic" operas (there are only four of them) mostly fit the sci-fi genre... most obviously 'Alcina'... a sorceress on a strange island abducts earthlings for her sexual pleasure. But once they fail to satisfy her needs, she turns them into garden items. Only the girlfriend of one of the abductees is brave enough to reach the
planet island and succeed in finding her stolen lover... plus his dad (who's been turned into bush, then a lion). In fact a whole island-full of victims are restored to human form once Alcina's power is symbolically smashed.
There are several more C20th sci-fi operas worth a mention - including Jonathan Dove's "Man On The Moon", and the Triffid-inspired "Help! Help! The Globolinks!" by Gian Carlo Menotti. (The Globolinks are vanquished by the High School Band - they hate music, and it drives them potty. The band are mustered by a Russian Operatic Soprano who teaches at the school :o ).
But wasn't it perhaps the Age Of Enlightenment that most dearly needed to establish the superiority of the Rational Mind Of Man over every kind of savagery and depravity? There's Mozart's opera "Bastien & Bastienne", in which the magic powers of the supernatural Colas place Bastien under his control ("Ziggy! Zaggy! Diggy! Daggy!") - whilst he hypnotises Bastienne into behaviour-patterns more calculated to help her hang onto her man.
And there's "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail' in which a shipwreck maroons our four lovable young
ghostcatchers visitors
and their loyal dog Scooby in a strange land where everything is different to where they come from. They get captured and tied up - and nearly executed... but good triumphs in the end.
And Osmin would have got away with it too, if it hadn't been for those kids and their darn dog... Of course there's also the one about the beautiful Princess who's been abducted by a bizarre cult organisation, and the young hero who falls in love with her portrait and endures all kinds of Trials in order to rescue her... (using the Secret Powers which he always had, but didn't know how to use...)
Or how about the one about the seducer with supernatural powers, whose lists of seductions run to thousands... chased by numerous former victims, including a noblewoman and her nerdy useless boyfriend... who is finally brought to justice and despatched to oblivion?
I see you shiver in anticip