Minnesota Opera presents an adaptation of the children’s book ‘The Snowy Day’ in St. Paul

Quick: What’s the most checked-out book in the history of the New York Public Library system?

Give up? The answer is “The Snowy Day,” a 1962 children’s picture book by Ezra Jack Keats about a young boy in the city delighting in the beauty and adventure he finds in the aftermath of a major snowfall. The Caldecott Medal-winning book broke boundaries upon publication for chronicling the experiences of a young Black boy.

If you’ve ever read that little book — and chances are good that you have — you might be surprised to find that it’s been adapted into an opera. Yes, it’s only a little over an hour long, but Minnesota Opera is presenting it at St. Paul’s Ordway Center, opening this Saturday.

“Yes, it’s a short children’s book, but it’s expanded upon,” soprano Raven McMillon said last week when we met up at the Minnesota Opera Center in Minneapolis’ North Loop. “I thought it was cool to turn a simple story of Black boy joy into a more fleshed-out story, a nice little show.”

McMillon debuted the role of Peter, the young protagonist of “The Snowy Day,” when it premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 2021. And now she’s coming north to sing the same role with Minnesota Opera. She says that she fell in love with the music that composer Joel Thompson wrote for the opera the first time she heard it.

“You can really hear the wonder, the excitement, the newness of the experience for Peter in Joel’s music,” she said. “I think the score’s stunning. The vocal lines, but, especially, the orchestrations, the interludes, everything is right there.

“We often say in our field that the really good composers — Mozart, Verdi, Puccini — give you everything in the music. And I think that Joel also does an amazing job of that.”

Thompson is best known for a work quite disparate in tone from “The Snowy Day”: the choral composition “The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” which takes for its text the final words of Black men killed by police officers. Whereas that piece is suffused with grief and tragedy, “The Snowy Day” is all about an innocent sense of wonder.

“It’s like this limitless curiosity about the world around you,” said Eboni Adams, the production’s director and choreographer. “It feels like a pop-up book, like the book has come to life onstage. … But the librettist, Andrea Davis Pinkney, gives so much insight not only to what Peter experiences, but his feelings about what he’s experiencing.”

So how did McMillon tap into the 7-year-old boy inside her?

“A lot of it is just letting go of adult inhibition,” she said. “Kids don’t worry as much about looking awkward or sounding weird, sounding silly. You just have to let go of what you would do and get into there almost being no rules.”

But a parent might see it differently.

“There’s an aria by Peter’s mother, ‘Mama’s Misgivings,’” Adams said. “It beautifully captures wanting to encourage your child’s curiosity and sense of adventure, but, at the same time, being worried for his safety. It’s very poignant and hits at your heartstrings.”

“I think one of the main morals of the book is that you experience these things and that life moves on and you can’t hold onto things,” McMillon said.

Both Adams and McMillon believe that it’s an ideal first opera, no matter your age. And Minnesota Opera is encouraging audiences as young as age 4 to attend.

“People who just want to have a good time will enjoy this,” McMillon said. “It’s uplifting, it’s in English, it’s not particularly long. It’s a very relatable story.”

Whether you checked it out of the library as a kid or not.

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Feb. 13, 5:30 p.m. Feb. 15, 2 p.m. Feb. 16.

Where: Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St., St. Paul.

Tickets: $41-$258 (ages 4-17, $23), available at 612-333-6669 or mnopera.org.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.