In L’enfant et les sortilèges, a child’s powerful imagination transforms his house and garden into an astonishing and terrifying realm, with singing furniture, bellowing trees and, of course, a fairy princess. As children need very little to create a magical world around them, I staged the opera with an emphasis on joyful simplicity—in the Jonathan Edwards dining hall, no technology, and the use of very simple objects to suggest wonderful things. Because we, the cast, believed wholeheartedly that our umbrella was a giant clock and that by flapping fans in our hands we became insects, the audience believed as well.

Featuring: Elizabeth Picker, Scott McCreary (pictured left), Emily Misch,  Lauren Libaw, Catherine Leech, Phyllis Thangaraj, Nathan Calixto, Stephanie Chan (pictured left), Gabriella Tortorello, Rachel Marcus, Mike Pacer, Stefan Weijola, Courtney Grafton, and Richard Lalli.

Production Design & Execution by Gary Jaffe