Five stars isn't enough to herald the arrival of a wonderful new DVD, a "magical opera" for children based on Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. It's from the BBC in cooperation with Sony Music (since last March Sony/BMG) and the Houston Grand Opera, and it's utterly enchanting.
It's a mostly British affair -- recorded in London's Abbey Road Studios last summer, and using children alongside experienced adult singers.
An Australian baritone, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, sings the Pilot winningly, and celebrated British bass Willard White the King. Every moment in this production charms, mesmerizes and warms the heart. It's funny, moving and enchanting by turns. Whether you think you like opera or not is irrelevant. Adults and children, opera buffs and opera haters, all are likely to enjoy it.
Rachel Portman's score is in the popular style of Gian Carlo Menotti (Amhal and the Night Visitors), and is totally suited to both its intended audience and the message of this classic book (that adults lose sight of the important things in life). "I wished to create a work that fuses pathos, mystery, enlightenment, beauty, humour and joy," the composer writes. She's certainly succeeded.
Twenty-five thousand children applied to take part in this production, with 6,500 auditioning and 150 chosen. In the title role, Joseph McManners, who looks
about 12, is outstanding, acting with great naturalness while singing beautifully.
Also exactly right is another child, Mairead Carlin, as the Rose, avoiding sentimentality by innocently applying just the right amount of kitsch humor. The other children form a chorus of Stars, Cranes and Lamplighters.
The characters the Prince encounters are a vivid collection -- Richard Coxon's Vain Man, Richard Suart's Businessman, Lesley Garrett's Fox and Tom Randle's Snake all stand out, simultaneously lovable and idiotic where necessary.
Nicholas Wright's lyrics, too, couldn't be better. They're sharp and nicely ironic in a way children will appreciate. No wonder Wright was entrusted with
adapting Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy for London's National Theatre last year.
My only criticism is that there are no subtitles. Taiwanese young and old are going to fall for this show in a big way, and the sooner a version with Chinese subtitles is marketed the better.
Silence: Blue Ocean is a DVD plus CD package of French origin and featuring underwater photography. As you listen to 11 popular classical tracks you watch various forms of underwater life swimming by. It's rather like the Discovery Channel, or staring at your aquarium for an hour. There are English and French-language options, but this only applies to the chapter choices -- the spoken language is French, and there are no subtitles. There's also an attractive five minutes of humpback-whale sounds, with near-abstract visuals. One track listed on the DVD as from a Mozart piano concerto turns out to be from a Mozart piano sonata. The CD is a compilation of popular classical tracks with no particular theme or apparent purpose.
The Zurich Opera clearly has an on-going contract with EMI, as DVDs of its productions are appearing thick and fast. The quality varies, but here we have a Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg that has much to be said for it, but which nevertheless suffers from one major disadvantage. This is that an outstanding Meistersinger appeared only a few months ago from Deutsche Grammophon, featuring James Levine and the forces of New York's Metropolitan Opera [reviewed in Taipei Times on February 17, 2005].
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