The Vampyre Society

A musical version of "Nosferatu" was released in April. On the disc Nosferatu is sung by Peter Karrie, with Claire Moore as Mina, Barry James as Renfeld, Mario Frangoulis as Jonathan Harker, Mark Wynter as Van Helsing, and a guest appearance by Simon Burke. The music is by Bernard Taylor, who co- wrote the lyrics with Eric Vickers. (In) the story, the vampire meets his end not by the agency of a stake but through the sacrifice of a pure woman, who offers herself to him freely, and persuades him to stay with her until the dawn when the sunlight kills him. The subtext of this is presumably that a night with a good woman is sufficient to give even a vampire terminal exhaustion. For Bernard Taylor, however, his vampire wants to die because after a long quest he has discovered the meaning of existence in Mina's arms, and he has no need to live any longer. Mina, having redeemed the vampire, survives her ordeal to be reconciled with her lover and give the story a happy ending.

The musical has a number of good songs, the better ones, perhaps inevitably, going to the vampires and their accomplice, Renfeld - I liked, for instance, Nosferatu's introductory number "Somewhere At the Edges of Creation", and "Temptation", the vampire girls' attempted seduction of Jonathan, and especially the increasingly mad Renfeld's songs culminating in the jolly "Worms Feed on My Brains". The innkeeper's song "The Millar's Daughter", too, seems to be made for Society coach trips. Mina, however, is given what is perhaps the least seductive line in all operatic love scene "If you are ready, let's begin". However, if you like full-blooded vampires with a definite melodramatic edge then the disc is a must-have. And I hope I have a chance to see a full-scale production.