Name: The Shining
Author: Stephen King
ISBN: 9780593311233

Published January 31, 2026Updated August 17, 2026

This weekend, Opera Tampa is checking in to one of horror’s most infamous hotels. The company is staging a two-act opera based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining, bringing the haunted halls of the Overlook Hotel to the Straz Center’s Ferguson Hall for two performances only.

The production, created by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec and celebrated librettist Mark Campbell, runs about two hours with intermission and is performed in English with the Florida Orchestra in the pit. First commissioned and premiered by Minnesota Opera in 2016 under its ambitious New Works Initiative, the piece has quietly become a favorite gateway for first-time opera-goers.[1]

Jack Torrance Sings, the Overlook Listens

Unlike Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, Moravec and Campbell’s adaptation hews closely to King’s original text. The opera follows Jack Torrance (sung in Tampa by baritone Robert Wesley Mason), his wife Wendy (Susan Hellman Spatafora), and their son Danny (Ellie Siegler) as they move into the remote Overlook Hotel for the winter caretaker job — and slowly realize the hotel has its own agenda.

Moravec has said his score treats the Overlook itself as a character, building a familiar musical world that gradually decays as Jack loses his grip on reality. “You hear him going mad through the music,” he explained in earlier interviews, describing how the soundscape disintegrates alongside Jack’s sanity.[1]

Librettist Mark Campbell, whose 40-plus opera credits include the Grammy-winning tech opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs and the trans-themed chamber work As One, is known for shaping contemporary, character-driven stories for the stage.[2] Here, he and Moravec lean into what they see as the novel’s operatic core: a man torn between loving his family and the violent impulses the hotel is forcing upon him.

For King fans, it’s another example of how his work keeps mutating far beyond film and TV. Recent and upcoming adaptations range from time-travel thriller 11.22.63, now finding a new audience on Netflix,to one of King’s favorite underrated TV projects, to fresh stage takes like Misery and now this full-throated horror opera.[3]

Horror Heads to the Operatic Mainstream

Opera Tampa’s Shining also fits into a broader trend: genre stories crossing into live performance. Horror and fantasy properties are increasingly heading onstage, from Stephen King thrillers to upcoming Broadway projects like a musical adaptation of cult vampire film The Lost Boys set for 2026.[4]

King’s catalog in particular is enjoying a prolific adaptation moment. On screen, everything from Apple TV+ political thriller Pluribus — a recent King-endorsed favorite — to deep cuts like The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and The Long Walk are getting renewed attention. On stage, the Minnesota-born Shining opera and theatrical productions of Misery underline how well his slow-burn psychological terror translates to live audiences.

At the same time, streamers are keeping his worlds in constant rotation, from Netflix’s revived Castle Rock series to Starz’s embrace of darker Bachman tales. For readers, that means more adaptations built directly on the novels, not just the most famous films — a shift that can send curious viewers back to King’s shelves.

Opera Tampa’s production comes with a content advisory for scenes of domestic violence, mirroring the book’s harrowing exploration of abuse and addiction. But Moravec has stressed that, at its core, this is a story about love and sacrifice as much as it is about ghosts and blood. For horror fans and opera newcomers alike, that mix of grand emotion and creeping dread might be exactly what makes the Overlook feel at home on the operatic stage.