By Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: Film composer Rachel Portman - who won an Academy Award for "Emma" in 1996 and then received Oscar nominations for "Cider House Rules" and "Chocolat" - says to write, she needs total solitude. The same applies when she talks about music. Portman insisted the Houston Opera publicity staffer leave the room before answering any questions.
Rachel Portman, composer, "The Little Prince": It's being able to really concentrate and really think. I always find it hard if there's a noise, or people around, or any distraction.
Zeeble: Portman mostly wrote the "The Little Prince" at home in London, in her sound- proof basement office, with its 6-inch thick, vault-like door. But the first notes were sketched elsewhere. On a camel, she says - two-and-a-half hot, hard days into the empty Sahara, with just a friend and a guide.
Portman: I needed to go and hear the sounds of the desert. I thought I really couldn't write the music of "The Little Prince" without knowing that, without having been there, in that vast space, with sand, and stars and sky above you. I decided the best thing to do, as I was experiencing the desert, was to begin writing.
Zeeble: The book "The Little Prince" is the now-classic fairy tale published in 1943 by French aviator Antoine de St. Exupery. In it, a solo pilot crashes in the African desert, where he encounters the Little Prince, a sensitive boy from a planet the size of a house. The innocent, observant child learns of vanity, greed, generosity, love, and death from the pilot and characters he meets on Earth and on various asteroids. Portman, who'd longed to write for voice, felt the multi-character tale suited the operatic form. Celebrated director Francesca Zambello did too, and like Portman, wanted to do a work for both adults and children.
Francesca Zambello, director, "The Little Prince": The book is very suggestive, surrealistic, not realistic, and one with an otherworldly quality - and that is the adjective frequently used to describe opera.
Zeeble: Plus, Zambello admired Portman's lush melodic and harmonic music.
Zambello: I've done many world premieres and many have satisfied such a minority of the public. And I'm interested in satisfying a majority so they keep coming back. The melodies had an accessibility. I hate that word, but it is true. Accessibility means something that goes straight to the heart. And I found her music did that.
Zeeble: Nate Irvin, the talented 11-year-old boy soprano from Minnesota who sings the Little Prince, says the music also perfectly suits the theme.
Nate Irvin, soprano and lead role, "The Little Prince": That one sees clearly only with the heart, the main premise of the book. And that all you see is just a shell. It's not the person dying, it's just the body isn't walking around anymore.
Zeeble: The Little Prince's death is suggested at the opera's end, when a snake appears and offers to return him to his planet. The snake is emotionless, powerful, but sinister. Tenor Jon Kolbet sings the role.
Jon Kolbet, tenor and snake character, "The Little Prince": We don't want him to be evil in any way. But there is a balance between sinister and calming and loving and inviting, let's say. When the snake comes to take him away, Nate says, "No, I'm not ready yet. Come back tonight when the star is bright." If the snake were mean or evil, he wouldn't necessarily listen to the Little Prince.
Zeeble: Throughout the opera, it's the pilot who listens to the Little Prince. Just as the boy learns about life, the pilot learns from the prince that - in the book's best-known quote - "What is essential is invisible to the eye." From the pilot's opening aria, the audience senses that while the character is stranded in harsh surroundings, his imagination soars. Baritone Teddy Rhodes, from New Zealand, says this is his toughest aria of the entire two-and-a-half-hour piece.
Teddy Rhodes, baritone and pilot character, "The Little Prince": That was the most vocally challenging part. For me, I had like three big chunks of music right at the opening of the show. So it's in a way, my responsibility to get out there and grab the audience. Got to suck them into it immediately. 'Cause if you don't, it's an uphill battle for everyone else to come on and follow a dud. You don't want to follow a dud on stage.
Zeeble: Most opening night critics agreed Rhodes and the entire opera were not duds. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called the opera's impact extraordinary, saying "The Little Prince" may enter the international repertoire permanently. But Toronto Star critic William Littler wasn't so sure.
William Littler, music critic, Toronto Star: This is closer to Broadway-genre music. It's closer to Andrew Lloyd Weber than it is to Giacamo Puccini. Great music? Far from it. Effective musical theater? By all means. It's as though everything was going to sound nice. And I think this has an extraordinarily high quotient of niceness. Which sometimes leads to diabetes in the end.
Zeeble: Portman says if anything, she aimed for the bittersweet.
Portman: I always try and veer away from pure sweetness, 'cause I don't like sweet itself. I'd rather have it tinged with something salty or something more than one level.
Zeeble: Houston Grand Opera Director David Gockley thinks the work's just fine. After all, he says it is a sweet and innocent story.
David Gockely, General Director, Houston Grand Opera: It can exist with sweet and tonal music. I happen to love it. I see the way audiences respond to it. I don't care whether it's pass or over conservative or whatever. We have an objective of moving our audiences.
Zeeble: The Houston Company will stage Friday and some weeknight performances of "The Little Prince" through June 20th, and Sunday afternoon matinees through the 22nd at the Wortham Center. The opera will also be produced in Santa Fe, Tulsa, Milwaukee, and Boston. The Washington D.C. and New York City operas are also reportedly interested in presenting it. For KERA 90.1, I'm Bill Zeeble.
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