Opera companies have long craved a compact, family-friendly hit, good for all ages, like ballet’s Nutcracker. Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors still gets done, although it now seems a bit musty. Mark Adamo’s Becoming Santa Claus, commissioned by the Dallas Opera and premiered here in 2015, has yet to catch on widely elsewhere.
On Friday night, the Dallas Opera presented a family-friendly opera that has been widely performed since its 2003 Houston Grand Opera premiere. The Little Prince is an adaption of the beloved 1943 novella by the French author and artist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. To a witty rhyming libretto by Nicholas Wright, the music is by Rachel Portman, a prolific composer of scores for films including The Joy Luck Club, Emma and The Manchurian Candidate.
A Pilot crash-lands in the Sahara, where he meets a mysterious boy, the Little Prince, from a faraway asteroid. The Prince recounts his interplanetary explorations, with strange characters at each stop, before his arrival on Earth.
In Act Two, he learns important lessons: that the heart should be trusted before the eyes, and that love is the most important force for good.
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As you’d expect of an experienced film composer — who increasingly has ventured into concert music as well — Portman favors familiar musical styles.
Vocal writing seems natural, although voices here sometimes vanished in lower registers. The orchestra shifts seamlessly among movie-music impressionism, brief minimalist pulsings, patches that sound like updated Gilbert and Sullivan, and heart-on-sleeve surges of voices and orchestra worthy of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The Houston Grand Opera production, with sets and costumes by the late Maria Björnson, deftly lighted by Christopher D. Sprague, delightfully vivifies the opera’s fairy-tale characters. A circular proscenium-inside-the-proscenium expands and contracts, with singers sometimes popping out of vertical hatches.
Originally staged by Francesca Zambello, smartly revived here by Anna Maria Bruzzese, the first act presents a succession of cautionary characters. A pompous King (sonorously sung by bass Keron Jackson) wants his power acknowledged. A Vain Man (Jacob Abrahamse, with a pungent tenor) demands attention. Add a Drunkard (another character tenor role, sung by Christopher A. Leach), a fussbudget Businessman (Korin Thomas-Smith, with a baritone bright and substantive), and a Fox (Tessa Fackelmann, whose mezzo bloomed only on top). Most singers also took at least one other role.
Thirteen-year-old Everett Baumgarten vividly portrayed the Prince, with a treble voice always sure of pitch. He needed the amplification, but it was distracting to hear his voice coming out of speakers way to the sides of the stage. (Ayden Yang will take the role in the Wednesday performance.) Kyle Miller was endearing as the Pilot, but his pleasant lyric baritone was too small to command the Winspear Opera House.
Indeed, voices were repeatedly underpowered, or else conductor Paolo Bressan wasn’t careful enough to keep the orchestra in balance. (The Dallas Opera’s chorus director since 2024, Bressan was making his mainstage American conducting debut.) The playing was professional, but a trumpet was sometimes too loud, and some wind passages could have been tamed a bit.
There’s a good deal for children’s chorus, and the Greater Dallas Choral Society (Kimberley Ahrens, artistic director), sang enthusiastically, although one could imagine more fine-tuning here and there.
There’s much for delight, but the drama lost steam in a confusing episode near the end, when a Snake (portrayed by Abrahamse) snatches the Prince away.
For family-friendly fare, I wish one of our opera companies would revive Conrad Susa’s mini-opera for Christmas, The Wise Women. Commissioned by the American Guild of Organists, it was premiered here at a 1994 national convention. It’s witty and charming.
Details
Repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Feb. 14. $15 to $412. 214-443-1000, dallasopera.org.
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