Ask any Tufts student studying French about their experiences in the Olin Center, and you'll probably hear the predictable complaints about memorizing verb conjugations and obscure past conditional subjunctive sentence formations. Mention "The Little Prince," however, and even the least enthusiastic Francophile will subject you to an effusion of nostalgic praise.
Antoine de Saint-Exup?©ry's masterpiece is a children's book regularly enjoyed by adults (though they might not fully understand it.) It is also a symbol of national pride in its native France as well as an internationally-lauded story about remaining young-at-heart in a grown-up's world. Unfortunately, the operatic version presented by the Boston Lyric Opera, which plays through Feb. 27 at the Wang Center for the Performing Arts, falls short in its effort to convey Saint-Exup?©ry's innocent magic to the stage. Director Francesca Zambello, composer Rachel Portman, and librettist Nicholas Wright have put together a production that looks beautiful but ends up feeling excessively cheesy and, at times, even slightly irritating.
Saint-Exup?©ry penned his book and accompanying illustrations a few short years before flying a doomed French Air Force mission that remains shrouded in mystery. On July 31, 1944, the author's plane disappeared from radar, and he was never heard from again. Since then, his story has been translated from French into over 100 languages, and its hero has been featured on French postage stamps and even on a few currently-circulating Euro bills.
The story features a pilot who crash-lands in the Sahara and stumbles upon a young boy, the "Little Prince," who asks the pilot to draw him a picture of a sheep. The Prince lives on a small planet in danger of being taken over by Baobob trees, and a sheep is needed to eat the seedlings before they grow up and kill his friend, a delicate, beautiful, and very proud rose.
After the initial encounter with the pilot, the two characters get taken on a journey by a flock of birds to different small planets where strange and interesting inhabitants, including a lamplighter, a drunkard, and geographer, engage him in bizarre discussions. Eventually, they arrive at planet Earth, where a fox teaches the Little Prince that love is the most important thing in life.
And, if that doesn't make sense to you, you are obviously a grown-up, because according to the Little Prince, "this is something no grown-up can ever comprehend."
The Little Prince is a characteristically simple tale that is simultaneously whimsical, abstract, and packed with enough philosophical musings to ponder over the course of a lifetime. And while the director's efforts to achieve the precarious balance between simplicity and profundity is evident, the result is a performance that falls somewhere in-between the extravagant absurdity of "Alice and Wonderland" and the preachy tackiness of "Peter Pan."
Portman's modern-sounding modal score, the weakest aspect of the production, is not the strong, backbone of a piece of music that we are used to from classic operas. The music strives to let the story speak for itself, providing only the occasional lyrical push to move it along, and thus avoids showy extravagance. But, in doing so, the score lacks any memorable musical moments. The frequent lyrical gushes, cinematic-sounding filler (leftovers, perhaps, from Portman's film-scoring career) and obsessive flute and oboe solos become completely predictable, and towards the end, distractingly annoying.
While the orchestral score backs away from a spotlight role, an added chorus of cute, pajama-clad children provides an impressive accompaniment, but the overall effect does not quite fit in with the simplicity of the story (how would all those kids fit on the tiny planets, anyway?) In fact, the kids' chorus ends up being exactly what the score attempts to avoid being - exaggerated, clich?©, and corny.
The best part of the opera is the lead, the bleached blond little prince (Jeffrey Walter), whose command of the music and stage is remarkably confident, especially for such a young performer. Additionally, colorful characters light up the stage with exceptional performances throughout the story. Soprano Laura Choi Stuart (the rose) and baritone David Kravitz (the geographer) are the only two musicians who are a true delight to hear.
Maria Bj??rnson, who died unexpectedly in December of 2002, designed a set and costumes that border on ingenious. The rose's costume, for example, features a bright, sparkly skirt that folds upward in order to mimic a closed flower's petals.
The set, featuring a brightly colorful landscape behind a giant circular frame, complete with a full-sized airplane, looks as though it were taken straight out of the book. The only regret is that some aspects of the set, most notably in scenes when the little prince is traveling to different planets, are lost to those who have not read the book.
