As Crianças Terríveis by Glass, De (2021/2021), Dirigido por James Darrah, Regente Chistopher Rountree

Long Beach Opera continues its commitment to the operas of Philip Glass with Les Enfants Terribles (1996), the final piece of his trilogy based on the works of Jean Cocteau. James Darrah’s powerful and physically demanding production, originally seen at The One Festival at Opera Omaha, sheds new light on the piece’s conception as a dance opera. Glass himself adapted Cocteau’s novel into a libretto, which tells the story of two orphaned children who live in dangerous isolation from the outside world. Glass’s kinetic score, set for three overlapping pianos, transforms the original story into a hypnotic meditation on youth’s transience and its tragic illusion of eternity.