Where the Wild Things Are (opera) Wild Things should be played by dancers on stage with singers (amplified) off-stage". Max is a rambunctious boy who dresses in a wolf suit. After he throws a tantrum, Mama (his mother) confines him to his room. Max then escapes in his dreams to a forest, and then to the island of the Wild Things. The Wild Things eventually hail Max as their king, and the "coronation" culminates in a frenzied dance, the Wild Rumpus. In the course of the Rumpus, Tzippy, the female Wild Thing, loses her head, which causes Max to halt the Rumpus. At the end, the
Where the Wild Things Are (opera) Where the Wild Things Are (opera) Where the Wild Things Are, Op. 20, is a 'fantasy' opera in one act by Oliver Knussen to a libretto by Maurice Sendak, based on Sendak's own children's book of the same title. Knussen composed the music from 1979 to 1983, on commission from the Opèra National, Brussels. In form and subject matter the work relates to Maurice Ravel's "L'enfant et les sortilèges", as well as Stravinsky's "The Nightingale". Knussen also included a number of musical quotations, including Debussy's "La boîte à joujoux" and the bell motif from the Coronation Scene of Mussorgsky's "Boris