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Coraline review – creepy adaptation of Neil Gaiman's tale will turn kids on to opera

Barbican, London
Terrific performances and special effects ensure children in the audience love Mark-Anthony Turnage’s take on the cult novella

Given its world premiere by the Royal Opera at the Barbican, Coraline is Mark-Anthony Turnage’s fourth opera, though it also marks something of a new departure for its composer. It’s his first stage work specifically aimed at a family audience, and consequently avoids the overtly combative or scatological stances of its predecessors.

Its source is Neil Gaiman’s creepy cult novella about a restless 11-year-old, whose exploration of her parents’ new home takes her into a parallel world beyond a bricked-up doorway in her parents’ drawing room. The Other World seemingly offers limitless comfort and enjoyment, but its inhabitants mysteriously have buttons sewn over their eyes, and it soon becomes apparent that the love offered by Coraline’s Other Mother and Father is sinister in its controlling possessiveness. Rory Mullarkey’s libretto deftly condenses Gaiman’s narrative, though he makes some subtle changes: Coraline’s distracted real Father is no longer a writer but an inventor, whose contraptions now play an important part in the opera’s denouement; and we’ve lost both the talking cat, which is Coraline’s companion in both worlds.

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