"One must look with the heart for the eyes are blind."
This is composer Maia Aprahamian's grand finale to her children's opera version of Saint-Exupery's classic novel, "The Little Prince." I hope you had the opportunity to read it in junior high school French class, as did I! This story with its small royalty from a tiny distant star, roses, snake, and endearingly knowing fennec fox is a magical tale that helps us to know there is much more to this world than the grim realities with which we are daily presented.
Bagaduce Music's concert of Maia's music from its archives Thursday night at Edgewood Farm vividly returned Maia's smile and joie de vivre to my heart and mind.
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| Composer Maia Aprahamian in 2009 in the Deer Isle-Stonington School. |
Her bright blue eyes twinkled as she created a new musical work, glittered in school as she rigorously supported students in crafting lyrics and musical motifs. It was my great pleasure to work with her, accompanying her into our schools for two years during the creation of Opera House Arts' commission of her chamber opera version of Robert McCloskey's island classic, "Burt Dow, Deep Water Man."
Maia, an active member of the Greek Orthodox Church, exemplified this observation from the writer Julia Cameron:
"We are, each of us, more than we seem, more than the sum of our merely human components. There is a divine spark animating each of us, and that divine spark also animates our art."
It surely animated Maia's art.
Thursday evening's concert of Maia's "Little's" was a presentation of excerpts from three of her full-length works written with and/or for children and their families: The Little Prince, The Little Engine that Could, and The Little Match Girl.
Maia recognized the community power behind each of these three classic tales, from the hard-working optimism of the Little Engine who can do new things not previously tried to the critiques of oppressive adult society painted enchantingly and everlastingly by Saint-Exupery's and Anderson's fables.
A member of Stonington's Whitman family, Maia took back her original Armenian family name of Aprahamian. She, like we as founders of Opera House Arts (OHA), had a strong passion for presenting complex performances to be enjoyed by children alongside the adults in their families; i.e., music and theater and vaudeville and dance complicated enough to be enjoyed by all generations together. Together and with the Whitman family's enduring support, we created the Live for $5 Series at OHA to weekly fulfill this mission and to ensure that children as well as adults had access to the highest quality and most diverse performance forms. I remember the lunch at Lily's Cafe in which we talked through this concept of wanting to give young audiences something greater than the live performances to which they generally had access. Artists such as Avner the Eccentric or the playwright Mike Gorman's absurdist Biffing Mussels or Headlong Dance Theater were just a few of those who have graced the Live for $5 stage.
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| Biffing Mussels in Live for $5 on stage at the Stonington Opera House, featuring community cast with Tommy Piper and Melody Bates, seated. |
Music can help us carry with us in perpetuity our visceral understanding that we are but tiny specks in a grand universe, the mystery of which only our imaginations can conceive and express through art. When we leave the theater humming, or singing together the final refrain, we have taken that mystery and magic into our hearts where, like the little prince's rose, they must be watered and cared for. For as the fox told the prince, "Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."
Or as Maia wrote, and the audience sang along with Thursday's wonderful singers under the direction of music director Peter Szep in full, four-part harmony to close the concert:
1 comment:
Love your post Linda !!
Thank you for bringing back the clarity of Maia's vision and her joy in reaching the children with he extraordinary music !!
Ellie
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