Ravel’s marvellously rich musical score of his one-act opera, L’enfant et les sortilèges, is most often presented in a double bill with his earlier work, L’heure espagnole, but in this new opera production by the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University it was Debussy’s biblical tale of The Prodigal Son, L’enfant prodigue, that was its partner. Director Stephen Barlow has taken these two French impressionist musical works – Ravel’s lyric fantasy opera composed in 1925 and Debussy’s early cantata in 1884 – and melded them inextricably into one production citing as his rationale the cohesive theme of errant sons and their relationship with their mothers. He neatly brought this together at the end of the Ravel when both sets of children and mothers appear reconciled in an optimistic finale.  

^{L’enfant et les sortilèges. Photograph © Nick Morrissey, supplied by QCGU}

The story of a naughty boy whose world is changed due to his bad behaviour, L‘enfant et les sortilèges is a moral tale which ends well. In the key role of the child, mezzo-soprano Xenia Puskarz Thomas gave an excellent performance. Her dark, creamy voice and first-rate language skills were assisted by an...