Today at the Proms - Prom 48

Continuing our daily coverage of what's on at The Proms 2018, Susan Omand has a quick look at the programme for Prom 48: Sir Simon Rattle conducts L’enfant et les sortilèges ...



It's another Ravel Prom and the evening opens with nursery rhymes and fairy tales and Ravel's music for the ballet of Mother Goose. Next we get Shéhérazade but not the one you're thinking of because the Scheherezade music so much loved by films and commercials is the Rimsky Korsakov composition. This one is influenced by that but you may not recognise it quite so readily.



After the interval we get his opera L'enfant et les sortilèges (the child and the spells). His music accompanies quite a shocking tale of a child who throws a tantrum, destroys and tortures his toys and belongings and hurts the plants and animals in the garden and, in turn, gets scolded and shunned by them until an act of kindness brings them all together. It's sung as a concert piece rather than an acted opera for tonight, and in French but there will be surtitles (although how that helps the radio listener I am unsure). Anyway, here's a taster, with a scene from the Lausanne Opera's staging where the child meets two cats with bowler hats and flowers (yes it's as weird as it sounds)...







Here's the full programme for this evening's Prom which you can listen to live on Radio 3 or on the iPlayer

Maurice Ravel
Mother Goose (ballet)(30 mins)
Shéhérazade(17 mins)

INTERVAL

Maurice Ravel
L'enfant et les sortilèges(44 mins)(concert performance; sung in French, with surtitles)

Image - Photo © Chris Christodoulou