Jayson Lebaron

Emmerich Kálmán’s THE LITTLE KING (The Ohio Light Opera, 2014 Summer Festival – DVD) Inspired by the love affair of famed French singer-actress Gaby Deslys and Portugal’s King Manuel II, who at age 20 was forced into exile, the plotline of The Little King concerns a boyish monarch who falls hard for a visiting opera singer, unaware that she is the daughter of a revolutionary and plotting his assassination. During her visit to his palace, she has a bomb planted in a bouquet of roses that she has ordered for the king. Only at the last second, when she can no longer resist his charms, does she discreetly defuse the bomb. Their almost-explosive love affair blossoms.