About two years after writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera “Silent Night,” which recounts the Christmas truce among soldiers during World War I, Mark Campbell found himself writing a dramatically different kind of opera: one based on Stephen King’s “The Shining.”
At the time of the 2013 commission from Minnesota Opera (which also produced “Silent Night”), Campbell had only seen Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation — featuring an effectively menacing, ax-wielding Jack Nicholson.
Although he loved the movie, Campbell didn’t see it working as an opera. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to listen to a character as cold and austere as Nicholson’s Jack Torrance sing for two hours.
But the opera would be based on the original source material — King’s horror novel — and not Kubrick’s film. So to create his adaptation, Campbell got the book and sifted through its hundreds and hundreds of pages with a highlighter — a task that became less daunting as he discovered a main character who was more dimensional and even somewhat redemptive compared to the portrayal in the movie.
To move forward with the opera, though, he needed approval from King himself. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec couldn’t compose a single note of music until the author approved Campbell’s writing and shaping of the story.
“He’s protective of it — and rightfully so,” Moravec recently told the Deseret News. “I think part of this is that he just wanted to make sure that we were doing the book, not the movie.”
Campbell finished his first draft of the libretto around Thanksgiving and went through a roller coaster of emotions as he submitted it.
“OK, he’s going to be really nice to me, because it’s Thanksgiving,” Campbell recalled thinking as he sent it in.
“But this is Stephen King, who’s come up with the worst horror stories in the world,” his internal debate continued. “In fact, he would choose Thanksgiving to be mean in this situation.”
Campbell’s first thought was right. He heard back from King’s lawyers within 24 hours, he said, and learned he had the author’s blessing to move forward with the opera.
But the approval had nothing to do with the time of year and everything to do with the direction Campbell planned to take the opera — a more humanizing interpretation that has been popular with audiences since its sold-out premiere in 2016 and now, nearly a decade later, is having its first run in Salt Lake City with Utah Opera.
‘I could leave Jack Nicholson’s eyebrows behind’
Although King has long criticized the Kubrick film, his story has become inseparable from the image of Nicholson breaking down a door with an ax and growling, “Here’s Johnny!”
But that oft-quoted line isn’t in the book — and it’s not in the opera.
While iconic, Moravec and Campbell said, Nicholson’s portrayal doesn’t give Jack Torrance much of a character arc.
“The minute you see him arch his eyebrows, once you see him on the screen, you know he’s demonic,” Moravec said. “So there’s no place to go.”
Campbell’s rule of thumb when writing any opera, he said, is to make every character compelling enough that you’d want to approach and talk to them at a party. There’s layers to Jack’s character in the opera — and even a touching moment when he has enough self-awareness to see the error of his ways.
“Jack is someone that you’d be scared of, but you’d also maybe be a little bit intrigued by,” Campbell said.
For Campbell, a major difference between the novel and the film that shaped his own telling was King’s inclusion of Jack Torrance’s father, Mark Torrance. Learning of Jack’s childhood, and the abuse that was present throughout those years, made him “a much more human character,” he said.
One of his first — and most important — decisions in writing the opera, he said, was to make Jack’s father a character onstage, appearing as a ghost throughout. As he immersed himself in King’s novel and made those kinds of discoveries along the way, he found himself thinking less and less of Kubrick’s film.
“I still love the movie, but I know that we made the right decisions in our opera,” he said. “Stephen King put it all there, and I could leave Jack Nicholson’s eyebrows behind. And because it was easy for me, I think it will be easy for the audience to leave behind the movie.
“My favorite reviews were the ones that said that this was even scarier than the book or the movie.”
‘There are no murders’
The scares in “The Shining” opera don’t come from blood or gore — “there are no murders,” Campbell said.
“The ghosts are already dead,” Moravec reiterated matter-of-factly.
In fact, there are several operas that are far more violent, the composer said, pointing to the “higher body count” in Puccini’s classic opera “Tosca.”
Moravec, who doesn’t even like horror films, believes “The Shining” transcends the genre. The horror of the story, both Campbell and Moravec said, stems less from jump scares and more from the fact that you can sense the love members of the Torrance family have for each other. There’s also added depth to Jack Torrance, which makes having a connection to his character all the more scary as his mental condition deteriorates and he becomes more threatening.
“The human heart is the scariest place anyone can go,” Campbell said. “We not only are scared, but we’re sad, we’re moved.”
“It’s the story of a family trying to stay together under extraordinary stress and duress. And also, you know, the father is going mad,” Moravec said. “And I think of the father as a decent guy trying to do the right thing, but he has two different sets of instructions to follow. He has two pressures on him: One is to protect his family that he genuinely loves, and the other is to kill them.
“Now there’s a story.”
Still popular, nearly a decade later
“The Shining” marks Campbell’s third collaboration with Utah Opera, which put on “Silent Night” in 2020 and “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs,” an opera about the Apple co-founder, in 2023.
“I love working with Utah Opera, and I applaud their mission for producing new American opera,” said the New York-based librettist, who has written around 40 operas. “I think opera will die unless we keep bringing new American works into the repertory.”
“The Shining,” in particular, has become popular in the realm of contemporary opera — Moravec noted that both Utah Opera and Nashville Opera opened up their seasons this month with the adaptation of King’s novel.
Of course, a major draw to the opera has been the name recognition — tied to both King’s story at the heart of it all and Kubrick’s classic film with Nicholson.
But Campbell and Moravec believe that throughout nearly a decade, they’ve established a compelling track record that speaks for itself — one that started with King’s stamp of approval.
“It was a really joyful day in my life,” Campbell said of getting the go-ahead from the author. “It means a lot to me to capture the spirit of what the writer has created.”
“The Shining” runs at the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City through Oct. 19.