Pedrillo Boton

Pedrillo Botón

Story

The story is set in the land of fables, where humans and animals are persons alike. Walking along the road from one place to another, Peddy/Pedrillo meets a number of colourful characters such as a poetry-loving camel, a pompous carabineer, a lachrymose sea captain and his formidable harpist wife, and a wolf who keeps the economy going. Through these encounters he tries to find out ‘what he is’: not an easy task, for all people and animals identify him as something else, and different from them. In the end Peddy/Pedrillo discovers that identity is not to be defined in terms of something else: it can be good to be many things at the same time.

In a way delightful to children and adults alike, Themerson pokes fun at the skewed logic which often cements human society. The theme of identity and the author’s humorous-ethical outlook make his story highly relevant to the present age.

Theatre and Music

Besides, the text abounds in opportunities for musical theatre. There are poems, stories and songs, and moments for dance. The Camel-Professor who loves reciting poetry much more than lecturing; the Sea Captain who has so often told the story of his losses that even the trees and the stones can’t bear it any more; the Prime Minister’s Wife who is compared to a nightingale: these are ‘operatic’ characters.

In telling the story Themerson repeatedly uses the ritual threefold of fairy tales, as when the wolf (in a parody of Little Red Ridinghood) asks his companion to identify the good smells in his restaurant. These are excellent opportunities for the development of musical themes.

Since all the action is dependent on Pedrillo’s metaphoric walk (or “Pilgrim’s Progress”) along the road from A to B, music comes in naturally as an expression of mood and movement.

Responding musically to my reading of the story, I have tried to revive something of the positive naïveté of a 6-to-8-year-old in response to both the tonal idiom and the possibilities of musical theatre. This was not so difficult. Listening to and playing familiar music, or music in a familiar idiom, is a constant exercise in the suspension of prejudice, the ability to be surpised-while-knowing.

Inevitably the music betrays multiple influences and sources (such as classical recitative, Ravel harmony, Latin-American rhythms etc.) Even as an eclectic product, this specific amalgam could only be created today (and by this person, I suppose). In this sense the music may be like the protagonist:

But all the men I meet on my way think there is something doggy about me, and all the dogs think there is something human about me, and all the saw-fishes think there is something of a nightingale about me, and all the cats think there is something fishy about me […] (p. 8-9)

But nothing else is like all these in this specific way; a recognizable whole, I hope, not a postmodernist collage.

The score calls for three singers (mezzo soprano, tenor, bass) interpreting multiple roles, a child in the title role, and a narrator. The instruments of the ensemble are: flute/piccolo, violin, viola, double bass, guitar, bass clarinet/clarinet, trombone and percussion.

Work on the opera was started on invitation of a children’s theatre festival in Spain. Unfortunately, this festival has not taken place. Work is being done to organize performances in Spanish-speaking countries.

Lodewijk Muns, March 2009