Saint-ex
Music by Jenny Giering
Book & Lyrics by Sean Barry
SAINT-EX is a musical journey through the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French author and aviator perhaps best known throughout the world as the author of the children’s classic, The Little Prince. In the 1920s, Saint-Exupéry was one of the pioneering members of the Aéropostale, the air-mail company that opened delivery from France to Dakar. In their open-cockpit planes and without the benefit of radar or weather reports, the pilots of the Aéropostale overflew the Pyrenees and the Sahara, risking their lives for the mail and for one another. Over the following decade, they would conquer the skies of South America and establish the first trans-Atlantic mail delivery service. Saint-Exupéry became famous in the 1930s for his books about this heroic era of flight, garnering literary awards both in France and America and earning the title of one of “the eternals” of the Académie Française. Yet his most famous book, The Little Prince, was written on Long Island, where Saint-Exupéry found himself in exile during the Nazi occupation of France. A pilot at heart, Saint-Exupéry used his influence and fame to earn himself the right to fly reconnaissance for the U.S. Air Force, returning to the war over the protests of his admirers, friends, and family, all of whom wished to keep him out of harm’s way. On July 31, 1944, only weeks before the end of the war in France, Saint-Exupéry flew from Sardinia on a mission to photograph the Nazi positions near Annecy and was never heard from again.
Saint-Ex is a magical and evocative exploration of Saint-Exupéry’s adventures and romances; of his tempestuous marriage to Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, his Salvadorean wife, and his delight in the brotherhood of the Aéropostale; of the fierce intellect and profound sensitivity of a soul who gave his life fighting for his home and beliefs, but who left behind that eternal character, The Little Prince.