Who hasn't thought of Star Wars as a Meyerbeer-style rescue opera?
Ok, maybe that is just the opera geek in me. But the cast and plot have much in common with the grand opera of the 19th century. Hero rescues princess and wins a battle in the struggle against an oppressive empire, amid local color, grand spectacle, and grand music.
Ironically, the music would be one major obstacle in the translation of Star Wars from film epic to grand opera: John Williams doesn't seem likely to write an opera himself or allow his music to be incorporated into one. So a composer taking the story (with rights to use it) would need to create a new musical vocabulary for this piece: something iconic and unique enough to distinguish itself from the film's music, while balancing between operatic and vernacular to reach an audience appropriate to such a fusion of grand art and modern fairy tale. I don't think I could dream in my lifetime of doing Star Wars justice. But maybe someone else out there could.
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