The Little Prince (2000-2001)


Production: Ithikon Akmeotaton
Music-Sound: Studio 19

"The Little Prince" (2000-2001)
by Antoine de Saint-Exypery
(Synergeio Technon)

Direction-Adaption-Translation:
Thanassis Sarantos
Video Art: Nikos Zappas
Lights: Linos Meidanis
Costumes: Lina Motsiou
Choreography: Stathis Mermiggis
Animation: Larry Bakiroglou
Sound: Iordanis Tsolakian
Makeup: Simella Kalaitzidou
Director Assistant: Spyros
Vlahakis
Actors: Dimitra Karali, Sylvia Delikoura
Narrator-Pilot: Thanassis Sarantos
Production: Ithikon Akmeotaton
Music-Sound: Studio 19



The Little Prince (French: ''Le Petit Prince''), published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of French writer, poet andaristocrat aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944, Mort pour la France).[N 1] It has been translated into more than 190 languages and has sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books ever published.
An earlier memoir by the author recounted his aviation experiences in the Sahara desert. He is thought to have drawn on those same experiences for use as plot elements in The Little Prince. Saint-Exupéry's novella has been adapted to various media over the decades, including stage, screen and operatic works.
In The Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry talks about being stranded in the desert beside a crashed aircraft. This account clearly draws on his own experience in the Sahara, an ordeal he described in detail in his memoir Wind, Sand and Stars.
On December 30, 1935 at 14:45, after 18 hours and 36 minutes in the air, Saint-Exupéry, along with his navigator André Prévot, crashed in theLibyan Sahara desert. They were attempting to break the record for the Paris-to-Saigon flight and win a prize of 150,000 francs.[7] Their plane was a Caudron C-600 Simoun, n° 7042, registration F-ANRY. The crash site is thought to have been located in the Wadi Natrun. Both survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous. Lost in the desert with a few grapes, a single orange, and some wine, the pair had only one day's worth of liquid. They both began to see mirages, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. By the second and third day, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, aBedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment that saved Saint-Exupéry and Prévot's lives.
The rose was inspired by his Salvadoran wife Consuelo de Saint Exupéry and the small home planet was inspired by her small home countryEl Salvador which is also known as "The Land of Volcanoes" due to having many volcanoes.
In the desert, Saint-Exupéry had viewed a fennec (desert sand fox), which most likely inspired him to create the fox character in the book. In a letter written to his sister Didi from Cape Juby in 1918, he tells her about raising a fennec that he adored.
Saint-Exupéry may have drawn inspiration for the little prince's appearance from himself as a youth. Friends and family would call him "le Roi-Soleil" ("Sun King"), due to his golden curly hair. He had also met a precocious eight year old with curly blond hair while residing with a family in Quebec City, Canada in 1942.
The little prince's reassurance to the Pilot that his dying body is only an empty shell resembles the last words of Antoine's younger brother François: "Don't worry. I'm all right. I can't help it. It's my body" (Airman's Odyssey).
The literary device of presenting philosophical and social commentaries in the form of the impressions gained by a fictional extraterrestrial visitor to Earth had already been used by the philosopher and satirist Voltaire in his story "Micromégas" (1752) – a classic work of French literature with which Saint-Exupéry was likely to be familiar.
Upon the outbreak of World War II, Saint-Exupéry, a successful pioneering aviator prior to the war, initially flew with a reconnaissance squadron of the French Air Force (the Armée de l'Air). After France's 1940 armistice with Germany, he and his wife fled occupied France and sojourned in North America arriving at the very end of December 1940 with the intention of staying only four weeks.
Between January 1941 and April 1943 the Saint-Exupérys lived in a penthouse apartment on Central Park South[9] as well as another location in New York City, plus the The Bevin House mansion in Asharoken, Long Island, N.Y..[10] The couple also resided in Quebec City, Canada for a time during 1942, during which time they met a precocious eight year old boy with blond curly hair, the son of the De Konincks, the family the Saint-Exupéry's resided with.
Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince in New York City and Asharoken in mid-to-late 1942, with the manuscript being completed in October.[13][11] He later rejoined the Free French Air Force and resumed flying as a WWII reconnaissance pilot in 1943. Saint-Exupéry died in action during an unarmed reconnaissance flight in late July 1944, in preparation for the Allied invasion of occupied France.


(Source: Wikipedia)