Utah Opera's The Little Prince

Last night I went to see Utah Opera's production of The Little Prince.  I almost didn't get a ticket because I don't usually like modern operas with librettos in English and my only experience with the novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, upon which the opera is based, is when I was forced to read it in French when I was a senior in high school (I didn't understand it at all).  I am so glad that I decided to get a ticket any way because I loved it!  The story begins with a Pilot (Jared Bybee) telling a group of school children (Choristers of the Madeleine Choir School) about a drawing of a snake eating an elephant.  Every adult thought it was a hat which proves that adults can't see anything!  Then he tells them of crash landing his plane in the desert and meeting the Little Prince (Nitai Fluchel) who wants a drawing of a sheep to eat all of the bushes, especially the baobab trees, threatening to overtake his planet.  The Prince then recounts his life story on his planet which contains three volcanoes, one active and two dormant, and his beautiful, but vain, Rose (Grace Kahl).  When the Rose treats him badly, the Prince decides to visit other planets.  On the first planet, he meets The King (Tyrell Wilde) who has no subjects and only issues orders that can be followed such as commanding the sun to set.  On the second planet, he meets the Vain Man (Joshua Lindsay) who wants to be the most admired man on an otherwise uninhabited planet.  On the third planet, he meets The Drunkard (Addison Marlor) who drinks to forget his shame over drinking too much.  On the fourth planet, he meets The Businessman (Jesus Vicente Murillo) who fails to see the beauty of the stars by his need to count and catalogue them to prove ownership.  On the fifth planet, he meets The Lamplighter (Addison Marlor) who blindly follows orders to light and extinguish a lamppost every 30 minutes to correspond to day and night on his planet.  The Prince finds all of these adults to be ridiculous (the allegory was lost on me when I read it in French) so he decides to visit Earth and lands in the desert.  He meets a Snake (Joshua Lindsay) who tells him he can send him home any time he wishes.  He sees a rosebush which makes him think his Rose is just ordinary.  Finally, he sees a Fox (Melanie Ashkar) who tells him that you can only see with your heart not your eyes and that spending time with his Rose has made it special.  He decides that he misses his Rose and wants to go back home.  He takes the Pilot to a well to find Water (Melissa Heath) which saves him and makes arrangements with the Snake to return home.  The Pilot is upset but the Prince tells him not to worry that he has died because his body is just a shell that is too heavy to return to his planet.  The Snake strikes, the Prince disappears, and the Pilot repairs his plane.  The story ends with the Pilot telling the children that he can always see the Prince by looking at the stars.  This story of friendship, loneliness, love, and loss is so touching (I definitely need to read it again in English!) and Academy Award-winning composer Rachel Portman's music is incredibly beautiful.  I loved the costumes, especially the king's long train, and the set, which consists of a book-lined study and transforms into hundreds of pages from books to represent the desert.  The Choristers of the Madeleine School Choir, especially Fluchel who is amazing, are so talented and their voices add so much to the story.  It is a magical production and I highly recommend it (go here for tickets).