Review: 'The Snowy Day' at Minnesota Opera
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On the surface, there isn’t all that much to “A Snowy Day,” the award-winning children’s book written and illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats and published in 1962.
A boy makes snow angels and slides down a hill. He tries to join in a snowball fight with older kids, but is told he is too young. He puts a snowball in his pocket and later is sad to discover it has melted. And that’s mostly it — both in the book and in the Minnesota Opera’s staging of a recent adaptation.
But Keats did two extraordinary things with this simple story, duplicated in the opera. First, he was an iconoclastic illustrator, creating collages of fabric scraps and vividly patterned papers. The book, based on a simple image of a child in a red snowsuit against a white background, is saturated with texture and color.
Keats also had noticed a paucity of Black protagonists in children’s literature, and so drew Peter as a Black child. Poet, novelist and activist Langston Hughes responded by writing Keats, saying he wished he had grandchildren to send the book to.
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The Minnesota Opera offers an appropriately unfussy version of the story, duplicating its distinct look. Where the book had explosive textures, the stage version does too. Little is added to the story, and so we see Peter (played by soprano Raven McMillon) do the sorts of things children do on winter days but not typically what you see in opera: whack a snow-laden tree with a stick, look at his footprints in the snow, wander about aimlessly.
The production mimics Keats’ idiosyncratic touches, such as subtly cubist clothing. And, of course, it adds music, composed by Joel Thompson with a libretto by Andrea Davis Pinkney. Thompson’s score adds a layer of playfulness and warmth, echoing the sounds of childhood — from the teasing rhythms of kids at play to the gentle anxiety of parents letting their children roam.
The opera necessarily adds to the original story — staged as written, the book would last about 10 minutes. There is more time spent with Peter’s parents and he makes a friend. The opera never strays from the book’s essential simplicity and wisely resists adding too much.
“The Snowy Day” lasts about an hour. Just enough time to climb a hill of snow, ride a sled and return home when called. Just enough time for a snowball to melt.
I wish I had grandchildren to take to it.
The Minnesota Opera production of “The Snowy Day” play through Feb. 16 at the Ordway Music Theater in St. Paul.
