Shakespeare’s influence on Succession has not gone unnoticed by fans. Easter eggs abound, from Logan Roy’s distaste of the Bard to Frank stalling for time by referencing Much Ado About Nothing. The characters themselves also embody Shakespearean archetypes, with Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Titus Andronicus reflected in Logan’s brutal, power-hungry nature. Yet the most obvious Shakespearean influence by far is King Lear.
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King Lear seems tailor-made for an operatic adaptation, and in fact, Giuseppe Verdi (a major Shakespeare fan who scored operatic versions of Macbeth, Othello and The Merry Wives of Windsor) worked with his librettists for years to adapt King Lear before finally abandoning the project without writing a single note. He later confessed that he was terrified and intimidated by the heartbreaking scene of Lear wandering the moors carrying the body of his beloved daughter.
Luckily for us, the play was eventually adapted into an opera by German composer Aribert Reimann. First performed at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera in 1978, Reimann’s Lear follows the original pretty faithfully. The title role was created especially for the legendary German baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who starred in the premiere. Now considered a modern classic, Lear has been produced by major opera houses throughout Europe and North America. San Francisco Opera offered the American premiere (in English translation) in 1981, with Thomas Stewart taking over the title role. Recent stagings include prominent presentations at the Paris Opera in 2016, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence in 2019, and a major revival at the Bavarian State Opera in 2021.
