School of Music

L'Enfant et les Sortilèges - 2002
by Maurice Ravel

French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) lived in Paris at the turn of the 20th Century, through the First World War and for a dozen or so years after that. Paris was an edgy, artistic environment at that time with composers like Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy creating musical history.

For music subjects, Ravel sought those ideas with more alien and distant emotional objectives, underpining them with his new-found oriental tonal environment and his gift for imaginative orchestration. L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Magic Spells) from 1925 is a work fulfilling the above objectives well - an operatic story about a child's fragile emotions that highlights the strange and confusing thoughts that the child's dream world defines.

Allison Larty as L'Enfant

L'Enfant et les Sortilèges tells the story of a 1920's child who dreams that he is throwing a temper tantrum because he does not want to do his homework. He destroys many things in the bedroom, including his books. But many objects in the room - a teapot, clock, chair, and a teacup - seem to come to life and chase after the boy. After many minutes of being attacked by these objects, the boy, in a distressed state, breaks down and weeps. The visions of several things come to visit him, including a princess. The boy confesses his affections for her, but she is taken away as quickly as she had arrived. Alarmed, the dejected, the boy sees the garden outside his home come to his room where the trees and animals aggressively reprimand him for his overall behavior. Soon, their actions bring injury to a squirrel caught in their frenzy of accusations. The boy takes care of the injured squirrel and by this action brings reconciliation.

Click here for a full cast list.