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Last updated: Saturday, August 26, 2006
LLOYD WEBBER TO TACKLE CONTROVERSIAL RUSSIAN NOVEL
Musicals mogul ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER's next stage spectacular will be inspired by MIKHAIL BULGAKOV's Russian novel THE MASTER AND MARGARITA.
The theatre impresario made the announcement on his website yesterday (25AUG06), calling the project his "most ambitious undertaking I have ever embarked upon". The brains behind hits like CATS, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and EVITA says, "After six months of agonising about what I should write next I am going to attempt the impossible. I am going to see if I can turn Mikhail Bulgakov's extraordinary novel... into a stage musical or, more probably, an opera. "I know it has been done many times before but never, that I am aware of, completely in music... I am very aware that this will be almost certainly the most ambitious undertaking I have ever embarked upon. "It will therefore almost certainly falter and will depend on who my collaborators are. At the moment I have not approached anyone." Bulgakov's novel, set in JOSEF STALIN's regime, follows the exploits of Satan as he wreaks havoc on Moscow and is challenged by the beautiful Margarita. The book was completed in 1940, just before the author died, but it wasn't published until 1966, when it became an instant classic. Until 1973, parts of the book were censored in the Soviet Union.
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