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Born in Haslemere, England, the Oxford-educated composer has written the scores for more than 60 films and television shows, and won the Academy Award® for Best Score for her contribution to EMMA (1996). She was the first female composer to win the coveted film award and was subsequently nominated for her scores for THE CIDER HOUSE RULES (1999) and CHOCOLAT (2000). "The Little Prince" is her first opera and was premiered by the Houston Grand Opera in 2003.
GREAT PERFORMANCES: How is developing an opera different from developing a film score?
Rachel Portman: Firstly, I have to generate the drama completely, musically, as opposed to reacting to something else. The project ["The Little Prince"] started with the book, instead of with a film, and it involved me and the librettist and the director working out how best to dramatize it. So it started from the book, but we had to turn it into something that would become compelling. It started with us meeting in a room around a table, as opposed to me sitting down and being screened a film that I would then sort of have strong ideas about. This started very much from the story of the book, but also from nothing, in a way, because it [the original idea] could have been anything. It was a much longer process. It was sort of like, for me, what I imagine writing a book must be like. It was a huge project, and it took about two years for me.
GP: But it was still a collaborative process in that, instead of being screened a film and reacting to that, you were working in a group and weren't off by yourself.
RP: From the very beginning we were all, at the beginning, thinking about how best to do it -- whether, for example, The Little Prince should be sung by a soprano, a young girl soprano, which was something I really didn't want right from the beginning, because I always thought children would enjoy it much more if there was a boy in it, and if there were children in it. But then there were real fears that with the amount of weight on his shoulders, he wouldn't be able to carry a whole piece. And so that became my biggest task, actually. And the task of the librettist, Nick Wright, to involve The Pilot more, and keep The Prince's part as simple as possible.
GP: Was that challenge difficult, to make The Pilot character carry the drama like that? Or was it easy?
RP: Well, it happened very naturally, because the book offered it up, in a way, because of the way it's written; we just made much more of it. After a bit, it seemed perfectly natural. I think -- like probably everybody who works on these things -- once you get involved in them, they begin to find their own solutions, because you set up reasons for doing things and then there seems to be a right and a wrong to follow.
GP: Were you interested in opera and musicals as a child?
RP: To be honest, I didn't get taken to operas as a child. Apart from that, there aren't too many to take a child to, which was the main reason I wanted to do "The Little Prince," to be able to have an opera to take a child to and enjoy as an adult. Sadly, when I was young, I wasn't steeped in musicals and opera, although I listened to a lot of classical music when I was little. There was often opera in the background, on the radio, but it wasn't something I was introduced to as a young person.
GP: Was that part of the reason you wrote this opera?
RP: It's partly through having children of my own, actually, and wanting to introduce them to opera and to serious music in the theatrical experience, which opera is. There's a real lack of operas out there, again, that you can take a child to.
GP: Especially evening-length operas, two hours or an hour and a half or so.
RP: I know, exactly. It was that coupled with my desire to write an opera as opposed to a film, to write something more -- not more substantial, but something actually with a voice. I love writing for the voice, and you can't really write for the voice in film because it's distracting, I find, unless it's used very cleverly. It tends to be choirs, Disney choirs and things, and it's not that interesting what you can do. Whereas setting texts really interests me.
GP: How did you end up settling on this story, on telling this story?
RP: By looking around for quite a long time. It was suggested as an idea. I was working with Jim Keller, who's worked with Philip Glass; he's the publisher of this music ["The Little Prince"]. And Philip had been approached to do an opera on THE LITTLE PRINCE. And Philip said, "Rachel's looking for an opera right now, and I think she'd be much more right for it." And Philip also put me in touch with Francesca Zambello [the opera's director]. And she was very important in putting the whole piece together. [But] the original roots came through Jim Keller and Philip Glass.
GP: Did you have any specific input, then, in the staging and design with Francesca Zambello, or did you hand them the music and then they took it?
RP: Oh, of course, no! I was very involved all the way along. I was there at Houston [Grand Opera] when it was put on for the first time, right on through the entire rehearsal period, so I was very involved in how it came together.
GP: What sort of suggestions would you have made at a typical rehearsal?
RP: Oh, gosh. It's a collaboration, sometimes; it's hard to say that without it sounding like, "It's my piece and it's my direction." For example, there were things that I felt strongly about that I had written [in] the music and the way I'd set the text, which sometimes wouldn't have been evident to the director. She might have seen it another way. But since I was there, I was able to say, "Well, no, no, actually The Pilot means this when he's saying that," which was then reflected in the direction. That kind of thing. And I was very keen that the children be involved on the stage, in the staging. It was fascinating for me, having worked in film for so many years. It was the most incredibly exciting experience, doing something live with an audience.
GP: How did that idea of the children's choir come about, having them do the stars, the hymns -- I'm calling them hymns -- at the end of the acts?
RP: Hymns? The finales.
GP: Finales!
RP: (Laughs) They're finales! They're not hymns; they're not religious.
GP: Secular hymns.
RP: Secular hymns, exactly. I think that probably came out of my very strong desire to make this a piece that children would enjoy. If I take my children to see something in the theater, they're twice as interested when children come on the stage, however brilliant the actors are, however brilliant the adults are. If there's a child on the stage, suddenly the whole thing becomes electrifying. And I thought how wonderful it would be to have a chorus of stars and birds. The first idea was to have them be birds, the cranes, that fly from planet to planet. Then it turned out that they could be stars as well and it became a kind of running thing. Their contribution to the piece, it's hugely important when the piece is staged, because they get an awful lot out of performing an opera and being really involved in it. And likewise, the adults get a lot out of performing with the children, so it's really good.
GP: Do you wish that you had been taken to an opera like this as a child?
RP: Well, I would love to have been taken to an opera ... not this opera, that would be freaky! But I would love to have been taken to one, yes.
Interview by Marc
Geelhoed for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online conducted in March
2005. (photo of Joseph McManners [top left] by Adrian Brooks)
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