Herman Melville: The White Whale (radio play)

If you say White Whale, most of us think of Moby Dick. This is what Herman Melville called this creature, which is an embodiment of nature and at the same time a symbol of a mystery that is not given to man to reveal. The comprehensive novel by the American writer - which, incidentally, contains 135 chapters in total - is more than 150 years old and ranks among the gems of world literature. Precisely because of its vastness and complex compositional structure, it seems to defy radio treatment. After all, a sixty-minute recording is only about thirty pages of script. How to preserve the author's original message in such a small space? This was a question that all the creators of the new radio production were struggling with. It was clear from the beginning that the original literary message of the text had to be preserved. The script created a good foundation for it, but it was still just a foundation. It is a paradox that its author Petr Mandel, who composed incidental music for dozens, perhaps even hundreds of radio plays and fairy tales, was as a musician in this case stingy. Both he and director Vladimir Rusko had a clear idea - no music, no stylization! In order to create a unique atmosphere, only specific sounds recorded directly for this purpose in the exterior or in the studio were used and some real soundscapes from the radio archive were also used.