For those who want their opera grand and grandiose, full of oversized characters with oversized emotions in stories that drive them to passionate extremes of love and hate at the drop of a downbeat, “The Little Prince” is not your kind of opera.
“The Little Prince” is a delicate, enigmatic thing – an episodic little fable that in its simplicity can be viewed as nothing more than a story for children, or as a tale whose very obviousness implies deeper, darker meanings.
Exactly which of those interpretations is the “correct” one was something that I’ve heard people discuss after every performance of this opera I’ve attended.
People were questioning whether what they had just seen was a "children's" opera or a "real opera in 2006, when Tulsa Opera first presented it.
And those discussions continued this past Sunday, when the company concluded its recent, two-performance production of this work by Academy Award-winning composer Rachel Portman and noted playwright Nicholas Wright, adapted from the beloved novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
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The easy answer to the question is no, "The Little Prince" is not a "children's opera." It is an opera that can definitely appeal to children — something Tulsa Opera encouraged, by having young people come to the performance in their pajamas, as if ready to hear a bed-time story — but it's too long, too expensive to produce, too musically challenging, and finally too mysterious to be summarily dismissed as kiddie fodder.
The story, for those unaware of the source material, is about a Pilot (Will Liverman) who is forced to make a crash-landing in the Sahara Desert, a place he acknowledges as being as beautiful as it is threatening.
Here he encounters a tiny fellow he calls the Prince (Dante Michael DiMaio), who says he is the sole occupant and proprietor of an asteroid labeled B-612, where he tends to its two active volcanoes, rids it of baobab trees and nurtures its solitary Rose (Christine Taylor Price).
The Rose's demands, however, are such that the Prince decides he needs to explore the rest of the universe, in the course of which he encounters a variety of individuals: a king with no subjects (Andrew Potter); a narcissist (John David Nevergall) who lives on applause and attention; a businessman (Michael Gracco) who believes he can purchase and own the stars; and a lamplighter (Ricardo Garcia) whose planet spins so quickly, night and day last only seconds so that he is forever igniting and dousing his light.
When the Prince makes it to Earth, he meets with a Snake (Nevergall) who, like his biblical counterpart, offers what appears to be gift, but instead is something quite the opposite; and a Fox (Kristee Haney), a creature full of gnomic sayings that have the effect of a fable's "moral."
Sunday's performance was highlighted by some exceptional performances, beginning with the Tulsa Opera Youth, led by Aaron Beck, who served as the show's chorus and were impressive from first note to last.
DiMaio, who I do not think was amplified, handled the demands of the Prince well, with a clear, bell-time treble tone. If, however, he was positioned anywhere other than downstage and facing the audience, he was difficult to hear. But otherwise his singing was pure and beguiling, just alien enough to make one think this character was not of this Earth.
Liverman brought a rich, warm tone to his portrayal of the Pilot, to the point that one wishes the opera gave him more to sing. Owasso native Haney was an antic and appealing Fox, while Tulsa native Price give the Rose a gleefully flirtatious tone.
Jana McIntyre sang the wordless Water solo well, and Nevergall was exceptional in his diverse characters — the manic Vain Man, who wants only attention, and the seductively sinister Snake.
While "The Little Prince" is rather a static piece, director Eve Summer pacing seemed at times to be glacial. Lina Gonzalez-Granados led the Tulsa Opera Orchestra, handling the delicacies of the score well, if the balance between pit and stage was sometimes badly out of kilter.