"A hallmark of our program is that we don't do kiddie music."
Conductor Matthew Abernathy's comment about Minnesota Opera's children's program, Project Opera, certainly rang true in Saturday afternoon's performance of Scottish composer Lewis Murphy's "Belongings."
Murphy's opera premiered at Glyndebourne Opera in England three years ago, and was written specifically for young people to perform there. It is, however, anything but oversimplified in either its technical demands or its subject matter.
"Belongings" tackles the difficult subject of enforced migration, juxtaposing the experiences of children evacuated from the Blitz in World War II London with the plight of contemporary migrant children in a refugee camp.
Homesickness, boredom and disorientation are common to both groups, expressed in a series of vocal vignettes by individual characters. Murphy through-composed "Belongings" in a single sweep of 60 minutes, with no pauses for applause and no set-piece songs or arias to give the singers their bearings.
That put an extra burden of concentration on the young performers of Project Opera, who range in age from 9 to 18. Locking carefully into Abernathy's beat — he led the performance from an aisle in the audience area of the Lab Theater — they admirably navigated some tricky passages.
There were strong choral contributions, too, as the ensembles of evacuees and refugees voiced their fears and aspirations.
Brightly scored for an ensemble of flute, clarinet, percussion, strings and piano, Murphy's music was tunefully accessible but never facile. He cleverly wove a patriotic march tune into his music for the English children, while jerky syncopations signaled a shift to the present when the refugee group came into focus.
