In the Fall of 2018, the USC Thornton Opera program and USC Thornton Symphony present a rare French double bill featuring iconic one-act operas, Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.
Le Rossignol (The Nightingale), with music by Igor Stravinsky and libretto by Stravinsky and Stepan Mitusov, is based on a story by Hans Christian Anderson and speaks to a spoiled ruler’s lack of control over nature and death. L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Spells), composed by Maurice Ravel with libretto by the incomparable Colette, is the story of the consequences for a child who, in anger, destroys his nursery room, harming the animals around him. The child and the emperor both learn to find solace in nature and harmony in the worlds they inhabit.