Poster from Suzy Templaton’s animated short film of Peter and the Wolf, based on the musical work by Sergei Prokofiev.
One of the world’s greatest film composers may be about to win an Oscar – 70 years after he wrote the music, and 53 years after his death. Suzie Templeton’s stop-motion retelling of Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Prokofiev’s 1936 “symphonic fairy tale for children,” is nominated for tonight’s Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
A longer, grittier Peter and the Wolf
As generations of Peter’s fans expect, specific musical instruments represent characters in the story. But Templeton dispenses with Prokofiev’s narrator and tells the story with music and imagery alone — this time, in a modern-day urban locale rather than the canonical bucolic setting. Another departure from tradition: Templeton interrupts the music with long periods of unscored action. These mostly-silent interludes bring the film’s running time to 29 minutes, twice the length of a the original concert work (and Disney’s 1946 animated classic).
Watch the Oscar-nominated animated short film Peter and the Wolf
Prokofiev’s story of one naughty kid who gloriously “gets away with it” is one of his most enduring works — in its original form and in several adaptations and parodies.
Notable Narrators of Peter and the Wolf
A very incomplete list of English-language narrators on recorded performances includes Leonard Bernstein, David Bowie, Sean Connery, John De Lancy (Q!), Dom DeLuise, Dame Edna, Jose Ferrer, Jon Gielgud, Hermione Gingold, Alec Guinness, Melissa Joan Hart (Clarissa), Boris Karloff (Grinch!), Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo), Christopher Lee, Jack Lemmon, Sophia Loren, Dudley Moore, Itzhak Perlman, André Previn, Ralph Richardson, Patrick Stewart, and Sting. Sterling Holloway and Paige O’Hara (as Belle) narrated different editions of the Disney adaptation.
Prokofiev family members have lent their vocal talents to English recordings. The composer’s first wife, mezzo-soprano Lina Prokofieva (credited as Lina Prokofiev) narrates the Chandos / Neemi Jarvi recording. Son Oleg Prokofiev (a sculptor) & grandson Gabriel Prokofiev (an actor and musician) collaborate on the Hyperion recording under Ronald Corp’s baton.
Look who’s lent their vocal talents to Peter and the Wolf!
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Adaptations and Parodies of Peter and the Wolf
Comedic retellings of Peter and the Wolf have been crafted by Peter Shickele (“Sneeky Pete and the Wolf”), Weird Al Yankovic, and NPR’s “All Things Considered” (in a developing news treatment a la “You Are There”). American holiday movie fans will recognize the wolf’s brass theme as the leitmotiv for schoolyard bully Scut Farkus in “A Christmas Story.”
In the tradition of Wicked (the book and musical defending the witches’ side of the Wizard of Oz story), Peter and the Wolf has even been retold from the wolf’s point of view in The Wolf and Peter by Jean-Pascal Beintus (narrated by Bill Clinton on the Russian National Orchestra’s Peter and the Wolf/Wolf Tracks album).
Updated Monday 7:23 AM: And the Oscar goes to Peter and the Wolf!