Saturday Jan 26, 2019
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM PST
Saturday, January 26
7:00 - 10:00 PM
St. Edward Catholic Church
601 W C St
Shelton, WA 98584
$20 general/$16 military
"Peter and the Wolf" is a musical fairytale. It isn’t an opera (there’s no singing) and it isn’t a ballet (although it can be performed that way); nor is it a play (there are no actors). Instead it’s a musical tale in which the orchestra tells the story, helped along by a narrator – in our case, Jeff Slakey from iFiberOne News Radio.
Prokofiev wrote "Peter and the Wolf" to help children get to know the instruments of the orchestra. So this fantastic tale with its charming music has an ulterior motive. Each character in Prokofiev’s musical fairytale is represented by a different instrument of the orchestra: the bird by a twittering flute, the duck by a plangent oboe, the cat by a mellifluous clarinet, Peter’s grumpy grandfather by a bassoon, the dreaded wolf by three horns, and Peter by all the strings of the orchestra playing a jaunty march tune. The timpani (or “kettledrums”) have their part to play when the hunters turn up, shooting their rifles.
"Peter and the Wolf" was an immediate success with the toughest critics of all: children. Prokofiev wrote the story himself and, since he had two sons of his own, he knew how to capture the childish imagination by making Peter a bold but rebellious hero: “Peter paid no attention to his grandfather. Boys like him are not afraid of wolves.”