SF Opera's Little Prince

The grown ups did too! We saw some man in suit marking the beat both with his hand and foot, totally into the performance. And it's easy to get drawn in. The adaptation is familiar to those who read the book: an aviator, stranded in the desert, runs into a little boy wise beyond his age. The little boy ends up telling his stories of traveling from his little planet to earth, encountering strange people along the way. His encounters with a lamplighter, a drunk, a vain man, a businessman, a king all point out the futility and absurdity of the adult lifestyle, powerless over what it pretends to control, devoid of meaning despite its self-importance, and less logical than the simple philosophy of love and friendship and poetry of the sunsets expressed by the Little Prince. The Little Prince needs a lamb to eat the baobab shoots who threaten to phagocyte his planet should they grow fully. He is concerned a lamb might eat his precious rose too, a flower that he cares for with great love. All these elements find themselves in the opera as well, faithful to the spirit of the book.

Adapting the Petit Prince is a challenge: how to convey the magic of the relationship between the grown-up and the kid? We saw this clip of a movie version of the encounter of the Prince with the Fox played by Gene Wilder,

and, well, we found it disturbing. We kept wondering when would that pervy looking fox pop the question: do you like movies about bushy tails? The opera avoids this pitfall. It does succeed in conveying the innocence and purity of the kid's interaction with grown-ups. It helps that the kids is a sung by a mezzo-soprano (a kittenish Marie Lenormand), not a baritone.

We'll be spoilsports and admit that we found the performance, while still very enjoyable, lacking of a sparkle. It's not stranded like the plane on the set, but it could soar higher. Oh, the singers do a magnificent job. Eugene Brancoveanu, as the pilot, brings charisma and the stentorian voice we're accustomed to. While pilotes nowadays are merely glorified bus drivers, flying the aéropostale lines back in St Ex's days was a job for adventurers. Eugene is so perfectly credible, we'll cast him first for Indiana Jones, the opera. And the supporting cast does a great job: current Adler fellow Ji Young Yang is a ravishing rose; former Adler fellow Thomas Glenn took turn scaring us as the snake, and entertaining us as the hilarious Vain Man; we were pleased to see the Merola alumni Andrew Bidlack, Kenneth Kellogg and Tamara Wapinsky, all three of them now Adler fellows, for their debuts on the SF Opera stage. Bidlack cumulates four roles, does he get paid four times as much? Kellogg's deepest bass suited the King's character perfectly.

Albeit the libretto provides plenty of comic relief (hilarious baobabs, a funny choir of hunters), it keeps the Prince in a rather sullen mood. So it comes a bit as a surprise when the pilot eventually complains he'll miss the kid's laughter. What? He laughed? We missed it. The other thing holding the performance slightly down seems to be the overcautious approach to the tempi chosen by conductor Sara Jobin. It might have been due to the Petit Prince himself, sung on Friday night by Tovi Wayne, a precocious 12yo from Modesto. He has the requisite angelic voice for the Petit Prince role. We admit that the amplification, required to boost his voice with no strain, took some getting used to: a dialogue with the pilot would have Brancoveanu forcefully singing straight at us, while the Prince's replies would come from a diffuse halo surrounding the stage. And there would be some uneveness when the mike would not pick up his voice, or the sound engineer would adjust the volume. Tovi did a great job, by the way! We'd be scared to death being up there on stage, our voice we'd be shaking if we only had to say Hi! Nice weather today, isn't it? We'd fumble the line twelve times. Tovi on the other hand was a total pro.

But the composer, Rachel Portman, she of the winning Academy Award for the soundtrack for Emma, conscious of minimizing the difficulty for a child performer, gave the Little Prince rather flat and simple, almost repetitive lines. The score has to be handled deftly to stay lively. We found the clip below of the performance of the same opera, similar production in London, and the brisker tempi, the more energetic conducting hand, the clear transition, should be an example for the next set of performances.

That being said, we're pretty sure that with the first 3 performances under their belt, the crew might feel more comfortable adding a bit more variety in the pace of the opera. And then it will be a pleasure not only for kids, but for everyone.

Three more performance of the Little Prince at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley
Fri May 9, 2008 7:30 pm, Sat May 10, 2008 7:30 pm, Sun May 11, 2008 3 pm,
Box office: (415) 864-3330