‘The Shining’ is an opera — but don’t think of an ax

About two years after writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera “ Silent Night ,” which recounts the Christmas truce among soldiers during World War I, Mark Campbell found himself writing a dramatically different kind of opera: one based on Stephen King’s “The Shining.”

At the time of the 2013 commission from Minnesota Opera (which also produced “Silent Night”), Campbell had only seen Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation — featuring an effectively menacing, ax-wielding Jack Nicholson.

Although he loved the movie, Campbell didn’t see it working as an opera. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to listen to a character as cold and austere as Nicholson’s Jack Torrance sing for two hours.

But the opera would be based on the original source material — King’s horror novel — and not Kubrick’s