Ravel onstage

Ravel's works for the stage often highlight his wonderfully imaginative inner child, as in Ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose), featuring musical encapsulations of fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty; and L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Spells), whose libretto — by literary legend Colette! — has an impolite child taken to task by the household objects he mistreats. But here you'll also find the ecstatically beautiful ballet Daphnis et Chloé, with an Ancient Greek tale set to Ravel's lushest harmonies; and the bawdy L'Heure espagnole, a farcical one-act opera buffa that demonstrates the composer's longtime affinity for Spanish-flavored music.