Music: Mastering the Wild Things

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Knussen, 33, who came to international attention as a l5-year-old when he conducted his Symphony No. 1 with the London Symphony Orchestra, employs a free but conservative modern idiom to conjure up Max's fantastic experiences. In one scene, when the Wild Things, having discovered that little Max is the wildest thing of them all, crown him their king, Knussen appropriates the obsessive, bell-like motif of the coronation scene from Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Especially effective is the naively Stravinskian Wild Rumpus, in which Max and his cohort dance a childish bacchanale in praise of anarchy. Knussen, while no avant-garde pathbreaker, has become a solid craftsman in the sturdy British tradition of William Walton and Arnold Bax.

Director Frank Corsaro staged Wild Things vividly, reveling in Max's violent rebelliousness and setting the Wild Things lurching about with a barely restrained glee. The tessitura, or range, of the role of Max lies high, which impeded the clarity of Beardsley's diction (When will composers writing in English realize this?), but she sang sweetly and admirably captured the boy's moods, including his relieved penitence at the end. In the pit, Pinchas Zukerman led the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in a confident and polished performance. Recently, the costumes for the 1981 Corsaro-Sendak production of Janakcek's The Cunning Little Vixen at the New York City Opera were destroyed by fire in a New Jersey warehouse. The sting of that loss, however, should be partly assuaged by the pair's Minnesota triumph. Even if, musically, Wild Things is not on the exalted level of the Ravel and Janakcek works, it should still be given the chance to delight every child and terrorize every parent in the land.