LES OPALES by Jeff Goode & Larrance Fingerhut copyright © 1994

Les Opales is a musical for children based on The Story of Opal - The Journal of an Understanding Heart by Opal Whiteley, published in the Atlantic Monthly, 1920. It tells the story of a spirited five-year-old girl growing up in the lumbercamps of turn-of-the-century Oregon. She retreats from the loveless and sometimes abusive world of her adoptive family, into a magical fairyland populated by anthropomorphized animals, plants and streams.

Les Opales brings to life her adventures with Peter Paul Rubens the pig, William Shakespeare the horse, and the musical woodmice Mozart and Mendolssohn, as well as singing potatoes, peas and trees galore. But her joyous adventures with her animal friends are haunted by the spectre of adults who refuse to understand the beauty of a fertile imagination.

PRODUCTION HISTORY:

Summer Festival of the Arts - Southwest Harbor, Maine
July 23 & 24, 1994

directed by Meridith Schaller
music direction by Larrance Fingerhut

CAST:
Mary Anna Fox ........... Opal
Sadie DeJong ............ Opal
Rachel Henry ............ Opal
Jenny Dwyer ............. Opal
Tori Wing ............... Opal
Christine Crowley ....... Opal
Kate Tanski ............. Opal
Megan Wooster ........... Opal
Georgia Howland ......... Opal
Hanni Freedman .......... Opal
Tristan Adams ........... William Shakespeare
Melissa Gott ............ Pearl
Adam Wolf ............... Lucian Horace Ovid Virgil
Geoffrey Brookes ........ Felix Mendelsohn
Sophie Wittenberg ....... Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus
Kyffin Dolliver ......... Brave Horatius
Emily Henry ............. The Wind
Kristen Anstead ......... The Wind
Sam Worden .............. Rob Ryder
Zack Wright ............. Lars Porsena of Clusium
Ingrid Sundberg ......... Peter Paul Ruebens
Sarah Smith ............. Teacher
Adam Wolf ............... Jud
George Watkins .......... Jimmy

ENSEMBLE:
Julia Conti, Nikki Conti, Megan Cousins, Molly Damon, Julie Dawson, Kelly Dugan, Kris Hicks,
Helen O'Donnell, Kristen Vekasi, Charlie Wittenberg, Amity Young, Beth Paluga, Elana Viner,
Lindsay Smith

assistants - Adam Wolf, Sam Worden
lighting - Brent Eveleth, Mark Nagornick