Paola Prestini Edward Tulane Jack Swanson, Brian Vu, Zulimar López-Hernández, Zachary James, Elise Quagliata, Jeremiah Sanders, Benjamin Sieverding; Minnesota Opera/Lidiya Yankovskaya VIA Records VIA 009 93:14 mins (2 discs)
Edward Tulane is a toy rabbit who sings, and musically a rather conventional rabbit whose picaresque history unfolds in a pleasingly tonal style. While originally a children’s book by Kate DiCamillo, Paola Prestini’s two-act opera with an elegant libretto by Mark Campbell is anything but a children’s opera.
Commissioned by Minnesota Opera, Edward Tulane travels through the dark heart of America. After being thrown overboard in the Atlantic and rescued by fishermen, Edward joins Bull and other hobos in railway boxcars, before being used as a scarecrow when he’s kicked off the train. After shacking up with a pair of abused children he is finally rescued. The message is as gloriously corny as Kansas in August, ‘there can be no happily ever after where there is no love,’ sings Pellegrina, who originally gave Edward as a Christmas present.
Prestini is a deft composer and surefooted dramatically. There’s an all-American Christmas song for the chorus. And she writes a touching lament for Edward in his darkest hour, with elegant music for the woodwind, when the fisherman’s wife reflects on her life in Act I. The orchestra whistles with the steam train and there are ascending chords that John Adams would be happy to own as the dollmaker mends a battered Edward.
Jack Swanson makes a convincing rabbit, and Brian Vu is genuinely affecting as the son of an abusive father caring for his dying sister. Maybe the dolls prattle a little too inconsequentially in Act II, but then second acts are as notoriously difficult as rabbits to pull out of hats.
Christopher Cook