OPERA REVIEW : An Earnest ‘Little Prince’ Premieres at Cal State L.A.

There were lots of children in the audience at Cal State Los Angeles Saturday afternoon for the fourth and final performance in the premiere run of “Historia de un Pequeno Principe y su Flor.” Some bore it more stoically than others, but few could have been greatly amused. As the Snake tells the Prince, “Eso es muy serio. “

The title is somewhat misleading. Saint-Exupery’s fable is set as an opera (in Spanish) within a play (in English), an allegorical clash between adult indoctrination and a child’s perspective within an anti-war nightmare, freely interpreted by writer/director Luis de Tavira. The crucial relationship, of course, is that between the Prince and Saint-Exupery.

The long subtitle, however, is accurate. “An opera in one act for actors, with a dramatic prologue and epilogue based on texts written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery” certainly describes the literal form, if hardly the content.

Nor does it begin to hint at the staging. De Tavira, who also directed “Life Is a Dream/La Vida Es Sueno” for Cal State L.A. last year, pulls out all the stops in a low-budget orgy of conspicuous stagecraft. Robert W. Zentis’ set, raked to funhouse angles, and lighting shift easily and eerily from classroom to desert to the curiously rippling surface of asteroid B 612. Georgia Gresham’s costumes provide more vivid characterizations than does the text--or many of the performances.

The music in the center of this 90-minute work is by Federico Ibarra, a 42-year-old Mexican composer and pianist.

Ibarra offers his singing actors sensibly restrained lines, always doubled instrumentally. His nondescript, neo-modal music, though, makes little effort toward development or characterization. There is scant variety in style or orchestration--supplied by tape--and the significant events of the plot pass unremarked in the music.

What sounds didn’t supply, sight often did. Tavira and choreographer Billy Lacy define relationships with movement, whether in the mechanical actions of mass humanity represented by soldiers and students, or in the carefully developed symbiosis of Antoine the downed aviator and his little Prince.

Don’t, then, expect to see “Historia de un Pequeno Principe” at an opera house soon. The title role in particular required a rare combination of talents, delivered in a remarkably androgynous performance by one R. Cassin Morgan. Morgan moved sinuously and continuously, sang clearly and cleanly, and projected a relentlessly fey idea of the quixotic Prince.

As Saint-Exupery, Armando Jose Duran acted broadly, sang lightly but securely, and tumbled deliberately, always a foil or cautious shadow for his Prince. Both Duran and Morgan were required to sing from exceedingly awkward positions, and never lost touch with the tape--an amazing, if not artistically profitable, accomplishment.

Such vocal display as there was came from April Dawn as the Flower, and Deborah Slater as the Fox, registration breaks notwithstanding. Rick Tyler, Ruben Garfias, Malcolm MacDonald--the menacing Snake, his gestures accented by sticks strapped to his arms and legs--and Robert Prior all took multiple roles capably.

Charlotte Broad translated the spoken portions idiomatically, and music director Robert Webb got his cast of disparate musical talents to sing effectively.