Shepherd School’s production of Maurice Ravel L'enfant et les Sortilèges

[@paules3437]

Here is a humorous song from the Harvey Schmidt/Tom Jones show "Colette." This recording is from a performance they did called "The Show Goes On." It is a song about when Colette decided on a "second career ("deuxième métier"); namely, cosmetics. It's called "Decorate the Human Face." kzbin.info/www/bejne/emW0oIGBdrugjbs If you listen to a lot of Harvey Schmidt's music, you can hear Ravel influences now and again. If you don't know who Schmidt is, he wrote "The Fantasticks," the longest running musical in the world. I wonder what it was like to hear the world as Ravel did.

[@richardbowker1338]

This is quite a long comment, hopefully interesting. Overall, this is tremendous achievement. I loved it, and have only one serious complaint. I discovered this piece only a few days ago, and it has shot to the top of my opera favourites. It is a short fantasy opera about a naughty child becoming haunted by things and animals he has mistreated, and who show him the error of his ways. I take it to be a dream but this is only my opinion. It's not easy to get performances with English subtitles, and this is the only one I've found on KZbin, and I loved it's approach as a graphics presentation with only the Child shown as a real face. It enables a better understanding of exactly what is going on. For some things, it is obvious what is going on, but not with others, such as the pastorals which I didn't quite get listening to a French performance. It is produced not with an Orchestra but with 2 x piano, cello and flute which works really well. I only regret the players didn't get a bow at the end. This is a difficult piece to translate, and in my opinion it only falls down with the tea-pot and china tea-cup. Here the singing is deliberate nonsense, with the teapot speaking a nonsense English and the tea-cup literally singing nonsense which are not even words in any language. In my own view this may be how a child of that age might think was English and Chinese, but I have no evidence for this. This production wrongly tries to make sense of it. I listened carefully and it sounds as if the nonsense-Chinese has been change in the singing as well as the translation. I've no idea why this was done. But for anyone new to this work, who is not a native French speaker this would be my go to performance on KZbin. Well done to all.

[@fredvacher3998]

I wonder if the nonsense has not been removed for being felt as offensive to the Chinese language and I must admit it makes sense to me. I always feel uncomfortable when listening to it in its original version. One century ago the world was not a small world like it is now and one did not feel it as offensive as it is now. Like you, I regret that the instrumentists and the choir are not present for the bows but I do like these bows. They make the young and less young audience have a glimpse of all the work behind the scene. I think it is a wonderful achievement that should be seen all around the world in schools. Not only it is an introduction to extraordinarily beautiful music but it helps to be eco-friendly and responsible. Thank you very much : aged 59, I was like a child watching and listening. ❤