From the beginnings of Slovene operatic productivity up to 1980, only two operas were based on Slovene novels, i.e., Lepa Vida by R. Savin and Deseti brat by M. Polič. The paper poses the question whether this number is small compared to European operatic production based on novels. Savin's and Polič’s work is placed in the context of the genre of drame lyrique, which contributed the greatest number of operatic remakes of novels. The author comes to the conclusion that the real
musical-historical context necessary to understand Savin’s and Polič’s work is the crisis of the operatic genre at the beginning of the 20th c., and the so-called Literaturoper represented the only way out of this crisis. The conclusion offers an ambiguous finding that it is more questionable why more Slovene literature-operas were not composed than why more Slovene composers did not tackle the operatic treatment of the Slovene novel.
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