Rebecca

Rebecca is a musical adaptation of the 1938 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. It was composed by Sylvester Levay with German book and lyrics by Michael Kunze. The plot, which adheres closely to the original novel, revolves around wealthy Maxim DeWinter, his naïve new wife, called "I" ("Ich" in the German version), and Mrs. Danvers, the manipulative housekeeper of DeWinter's Cornish estate Manderley. Mrs. Danvers resents the new wife's intrusion and persuades her that she is an unworthy replacement for DeWinter's first wife, the glamorous and mysterious Rebecca, who perished in a drowning accident. The new Mrs. DeWinter struggles to find her identity and take control of her life among the shadows left by Rebecca. The musical premiered on 28 September 2006 at the Raimund Theater in Vienna, Austria, where it ran for three years. Subsequent productions have been mounted in Finland, Korea, Japan and elsewhere in Europe. The first English-language production, in a translation by Christopher Hampton and Kunze, began on 4 September and is scheduled to run until 18 November 2023 at the Charing Cross Theatre in London. Background As a teenager, Michael Kunze had read Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca. In the 1990s, he re-read it and decided that the story would make a good musical. He traveled to Cornwall, England, to find du Maurier's son in an attempt to obtain the rights to musicalize the work, which had been denied to other librettists. Attending a performance of Kunze's long-running 1992 musical Elisabeth in Vienna persuaded du Maurier's son that the novel would be in good hands with Kunze and his musical partner Sylvester Levay. Writing the libretto took Kunze nearly two years, and Levay took another two years to compose the music. A 2003 demo recording in English was made, with Pia Douwes as Mrs. Danvers, Maike Boerdam as "I" and Uwe Kröger as Maxim de Winter. Workshops were also presented in Essen and Vienna. Kunze and Levay brought in American director Francesca Zambello and English set designer Peter J. Davison. In early 2005, they decided to launch the musical in Vienna, Austria, with the production company Vereinigte Bühnen Wien, which had previously produced Kunze's musicals Elisabeth, Tanz der Vampire (Dance of the Vampires), and Mozart!.