A Rome Crime Saga Reaches the Opera Stage, and Its Audience Keeps Growing

The New York Times reported this week that "Romanzo Criminale", a best-selling novel about a criminal gang, has been turned into an opera, after a hit film and a bigger hit television series. The paper's account describes an Italian public that cannot get enough of the story.

The Times headline sets out the route: from page to screen to opera stage. In the paper's telling, the television series was a bigger hit than the film that came before it, so the audience widened with each change of medium rather than narrowed.

Most adaptations arrive once a work's audience has begun to thin. This one reaches the opera stage while, by the paper's account, the appetite is still intact.