The LIbrary of America had a talk with Adam Guettel tonight about Light in the Piazza, with performance by Elena Shaddow. It was an interesting talk, although I think the Lincoln Center one a few months ago was more illuminating because there were more participants and more interaction. The interviewer interrupted Guettel's flow of thoughts more than I think would have been ideal.
One interesting thing was that Guettel said he deliberately read the novella only once, before he started writing anything. But he and Elizabeth Spencer, the novella's author, became quite friendly.
At one point, they were talking about how Margaret's husband's name was changed from Noel in the novella to Roy, and they both used a term that I had never heard before, that sounded something like, "retro-zhay." From the context, it sounded like it meant that Noel was old-fashioned or passe, but I'm not completely sure of that. Does anyone have a sense of what word they were using? |
