Tulsa Youth Opera: "The Hobbit"
Lorton Performance Center
June 8, 2025
Last weekend I saw Tulsa Youth Opera perform The Hobbit, an adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, as an opera. In another era of my life, it’d be hard to convince me that I would be watching children do an opera, or that The Hobbit’s plot line would make for a serviceable opera, or that I’d be watching children do an opera of The Hobbit, or that I would be reviewing it for work. Sometimes only a few things can be true, and sometimes a bunch of things can be true at once.
But I go to a lot of operas now, and I’m a big Tolkien boy, so I dragged my adult ass over to TU and watched this show.
I am pleased to announce that it was great. It was so much fun. I was very surprised by how talented some of these kids were; even the little little guys, who could barely sing or keep to a rhythm, were so funny and added so much to the atmosphere that I couldn’t even bring myself to care that they weren’t opera superstars. (Of course they’re not! They’re eight. Chill out, Zack.)
Emma Greenway as Bilbo Baggins was absolutely fantastic. The character of Bilbo needs to be flexible, able to be remorseful as well as cheerful—a pipe-smoking cheese hound who finds himself in over his head. I loved Greenway’s ability to take over the stage with a quick showstopper monologue, turning in an instant from excitement about the adventure to horror at the responsibility for other peoples’ lives. In this Bilbo’s hands, an obviously fake sword took on mythic importance.
Brock Cannon’s Gollum was—and I’m not just saying this to be nice because it’s a youth production—truly terrifying and impressive. Able to mimic Andy Serkis’s Gollum Voice to a nearly pitch-perfect degree, Cannon cavorted and leapt around the stage, willing to go to diabolical lengths to get the character across. At several points, Cannon literally let a rush of saliva out of his mouth and onto the stage to showcase Gollum’s more desperate moments. These kids are committed!
This production, while having probably less than .01% of the budget of the blockbuster 2012-2014 series of The Hobbit films by Peter Jackson (.01% of $745 million is $74,500; it was likely even less than that), was infinitely more rewatchable and rewarding and interesting than those films. As the reader well knows and agrees with, the three-film series of The Hobbit is canned drivel from front to back, an ungainly mess of CGI slop and unexamined choices that represents Peter Jackson’s hubris at its most massive, and should have been a movie of maybe two hours. Tulsa Youth Opera’s version, which sticks to Dean Burry’s adaptation time of 85 minutes, was quick, easy, and fun—something I’d return to and watch again, unlike the movies.
The pit orchestra, conducted by Aaron Beck, did a fantastic job in an environment which I’m sure is more than a little chaotic and haphazard. Asking a group of 20 or 30 eight-to-17-year-olds to sing on cue and in rhythm is a demanding proposition at the best of times without an audience. At no point did I notice anything off in the orchestra. Props to these professionals for staying with the children, and to Beck for having the flexibility to flow with these young actors and their erstwhile impulses, knowing when to pull back or rush forward to meet them where they were.
It was pleasing too to learn in general about Tulsa Youth Opera, which is a tuition-free training opera for grades 3-12. Some of these kids were obviously well-trained; Damian Alberti as Gandalf/Smaug and Nicholas Hoover as Thorin produced powerful voice work that would have been satisfying in an adult production. They’re doing good work over there.
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are great stories for kids: my parents read them to me in third grade, and I grew up obsessed with the richness of these fantastic yet familiar creatures and people. How fitting it was, then, to be given back that experience, as an adult, by children themselves. Maybe these kids will grow up to be opera superstars; maybe opera is just one beautiful, artistic step towards a different life. Either way, they’re sure to encounter plenty of adventure, just like Bilbo did.
