Best Musical

Don't get technical on us: Rachel Portman's The Little Prince was an opera, to be sure, but it was so opera lite (under three hours long and sung in English) that we're calling it a musical -- the best musical. Houston Grand Opera premiered the work last June, and the late Maria Bjørnson's sets and costumes created a fantasyland for the beloved tale by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was an entertaining and visually stimulating production, complete with flying cranes and dancing trees. Good-bye, little prince, we hope you come again.