Les Enfants Terribles

Adaption by Philip Glass and Susan Marshall

 

Rare is the work for the opera stage in which singers and dancers share equal importance in jointly moving the story along with their expressive power. This is something that is evident in the balett-opera Les enfants terribles, which world-renowned Philip Glass composed as the final part of his Jean Cocteau trilogy. In the story of Paul and Lise, the two children are both prisoners and victims of an imaginary world of their own invention, having created through play an entire world which they are no longer able to distinguish from reality. One way to interpret the piece is as Cocteau’s faith in the transcendent power of the imagination and creativity, in which the singers and dancers alternate in relating the events taking place in the story.