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[Met Performance] CID:263670

Metropolitan Opera Premiere, New Production

Parade: An Evening of French Music Theater
Parade
Les Mamelles de Tirésias
L'Enfant et les Sortilèges
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, February 20, 1981

Debut : Manuel Rosenthal, Gary Chryst, Nadine Tomlinson, Joey Reginald, Craig Williams, John Dolf, Wade Laboissonnier, Daryl Murphy, David Hockney, Gray Veredon, Gwendolyn Bradley, Richard Vernon



Francis Poulenc



L'Enfant et les Sortilèges received seven performances this season.

FUNDING:
Production gift of Francis Goelet

Review 1:

Review of Peter Goodman in Newsday:

MET PROGRAM MIXES OPERA AND DANCE

"Parade" arrived last night at the Metropolitan Opera, before a gala audience that outshone many recent [first] nights. From first to last, it was a most unusual and rewarding evening of music.

The program gathered three theater works whose main connection was that they were all 20th Century French pieces, rather loosely connected on stage by the continuous presence of a band of choristers and dancers all dressed in green with high green hats. In addition Harlequin, danced by Gary Chryst in "Parade," the [first] ballet, reappeared at the end of "L'Enfant et les Sortileges," the concluding opera.

All three were being performed at the Met for the first time. It certainly will not be the last, for the evening was basically delightful.

"Parade," a ballet newly choreographed by Grey Veredon to music of Erik Satie, opened the show. It is reviewed elsewhere on this page. The second work is Francis Poulenc's absurd little opera "Les Mamelles de Tiresias" ("Tiresias' Breasts"), composed after World War II to a poem of Guillaume Apolinaire written in 1903. After intermission, the final work was Maurice Ravel's fantasy "L"Enfant et les Sortileges" ("The Bewitched Child") written to a script by Colette and begun just after World War I.

'Tiresias" is a curious proto-feminist fable about a woman (engagingly sung by Catherine Malfitano) who, tired of being bossed by men, throws off her breasts, grows a beard and goes off to live her own life. After some indecision, her husband decides he can have children, too, and has several thousand all in one day, to the astonishment and admiration of the townspeople. Finally, the woman returns to her husband, and they choose to have children together.

The ostensible moral of this strange little story is that everyone should have as many children as they can. The play premiered in 1917 in France, when the nation was being bled dry of people by the war. Poulenc set it to music in 1947, after a second terrible war. But the work is basically too full of buffoonery to make a serious case.

"L'Enfant" is a psychological symbolist work about a naughty little boy (Hilda Harris) who brakes all the furniture and crockery in a temper tantrum, then is terrified and finally humanized when first the furniture comes to life and then the animals berate him for his thoughtlessness. The music is superlatively lovely, full of miraculous effects including a chorus of frogs and insects that delightfully creates the world living in the child's garden.

The entire evening showed the sort of ensemble work among everyone from producer and conductor down to the last chorister that is opera at its best. The sets, painted by Hockney in his stage debut, were glorious. For "Tiresias" he made a green, red, white and blue painting of a Riviera town that seemed drenched in the bright Mediterranean light. "L'Enfant" used two simple but potent painted sets, the last an awesome, throbbing red and blue magical forest which evoked perfectly a mysterious animal and vegetable world.

The whole evening made for a usually enchanting, though occasionally slow, amalgam, devoid of much depth or meaning but full of rather chic fun. The casts were huge, and it is difficult to single out one or two prime performers. Malfitano warmed up quickly and then sang and moved beautifully. In fact, the singers did so much dancing in "Tiresias" it began to resemble a musical. Not to mention the four singers who suddenly jumped up from box seats in the second tier to join the action.

"L'Enfant" was handled differently. No one on stage except the boy and the green animal chorus did any singing - that as handled by more greenies and some in the party-colored costumes on either side of the stage. The stage was peopled by dancers and children, playing cats, frogs, a clock, furniture, a teapot and teacup, a mathematician, a princess, and so on. Harris was first sulky, then frightened and finally compassionate as the boy.

Manuel Rosenthal, who conducted the first performance of "L'Enfant" in 1937, was on the podium last night and his interoperation, soft rather than sharp, was as delicious as pure Northern lake water. Producer John Dexter is to be congratulated for the way he gently managed to tie together all three works.

Search by season: 1980-81

Search by title: Parade: An Evening of French Music Theater, Parade, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges,



Met careers

• Manuel Rosenthal [Conductor]
• Gary Chryst [Harlequin]
• Jane Muir [Columbine]
• Kimberly Graves [Vaudeville Lady]
• Dave Roeger [Chinese Conjurer]
• Pauline Andrey [Elegant Woman]
• Sam Cardea [Pierrot]
• Christopher Stocker [Villain]
• Naomi Marritt [Twins]
• Antoinette Peloso [Twins]
• Nadine Tomlinson [Jazz Couple]
• Marcus Bugler [Jazz Couple]
• Lucia Sciorsci [Jazz Couple]
• Ricardo Costa [Jazz Couple]
• Suzanne Laurence [Jazz Couple]
• Virgil Pearson-Smith [Jazz Couple]
• Ellen Rievman [Jazz Couple]
• Joey Reginald [Jazz Couple]
• Roberto Medina [Fat Ballerina]
• Vicki Fisera [Commedia dell'arte]
• Patricia Heyes [Commedia dell'arte]
• Jack Hertzog [Commedia dell'arte]
• Craig Williams [Commedia dell'arte]
• John Dolf [Acrobat]
• Wade Laboissonnier [Acrobat]
• Daryl Murphy [Acrobat]
• Chris Pender [Acrobat]
• John Dexter [Production]
• David Hockney [Designer]
• Gil Wechsler [Lighting Designer]
• Gray Veredon [Choreographer]
• Catherine Malfitano [Thérèse, Fortuneteller]
• David Holloway [Husband]
• Allan Monk [Manager of Theater]
• Christian Boesch [Presto]
• Joseph Frank [Lacouf]
• John Darrenkamp [Gendarme]
• Jean Kraft [Newspaper Seller]
• Nico Castel [Journalist]
• James Atherton [Son]
• Shirley Love [Elegant Woman]
• Geraldine Decker [Large Woman]
• Andrij Dobriansky [Bearded Man]
• Stuart Sebastian [Choreographer]
• Hilda Harris [Child]
• Isola Jones [Mama]
• Julien Robbins [Armchair]
• Florence Quivar [Louis XV Chair/Squirrel]
• David Holloway [Grandfather's Clock]
• Robert Nagy [Wedgwood Teapot/Animal]
• Claudine Carlson [Chinese Cup/Shepherd]
• Ruth Welting [Fire]
• Betsy Norden [Shepherdess]
• Gail Robinson [Princess]
• Joseph Frank [Little Old Man]
• Gene Boucher [Black Cat]
• Shirley Love [White Cat/Animal]
• James Courtney [Tree]
• Ariel Bybee [Dragonfly]
• Gwendolyn Bradley [Nightingale]
• Therese Brandson [Bat]
• Andrea Velis [Tree Frog]
• Loretta Di Franco [Screech Owl]
• Nedda Casei [Animal]
• Richard Vernon [Animal]
• Francis Poulenc [Composer]
• Robert Nagy [Animal]
• Shirley Love [Animal]