Children’s Opera Showcase

Every year Utah Opera is involved in the creation and production of 15-20 new operas:  they are 10-15 minutes operas put together by children working with their classroom teacher and a mentor composer, and they represent a broad range of learning. Teachers attend a summer training workshop with Utah Opera, and then, depending on teacher direction, the students may learn about another culture, or learn to write a specific genre of story-telling, or do an in-depth study of a time period or place in Social Studies.  Students improve their writing skills as they create scenes in their story and then craft lyrics for songs in their ‘libretto.’ They learn about the elements of music as they build melodies with the guest composer. Next, they often help plan and create (with parental assistance sometimes) the set and costumes for their opera, while they are auditioning and rehearsing in their roles. Finally, they perform and evaluate their own work.

It’s a gutsy project for a teacher to take on, but one that teachers know is helpful in their students’ learning; the project always gives the children multiple opportunities to learn social skills: how to collaborate and cooperate with others in a group effort.

Every year we present 3 of the year’s creations in a Children’s Opera Showcase, in the Jeanne Theatre in the Rose Wagner Center, 138 West 300 South.  This year’s operas will be

• The Journey Home by 1st graders at Dilworth Elementary (Suzanne Parry, teacher)
• The Road of the Ruby by 3rd graders at South Weber Elementary (Michele McGarry, teacher)
• Dragon Fable by 6th graders at Woodrow Wilson Elementary (Pam Johnson, teacher)

The performance will begin at 6:30 PM on Friday, March 20. The event is free, with no tickets required. The public is invited to come for 1, 2 or all 3 operas. There is time between shows as sets are changed for the audience to come and go.

Here are some great comments from the teacher at Woodrow Wilson, Pam Johnson:

from an e-mail on October 16, 2008:

My class is so excited—I’ve never seen kids take to opera like this.  They love listening to arias while they work, they’ve enjoyed watching (and singing along with) clips from a few that I’ve downloaded from U Tube.  We have been learning some music theory—intervals, pitch up when a phrase is going to continue, pitch down at the end, etc.  All of it has been really enjoyed by the students.

They know some basics about what they are writing.  It’s going to be about bullying, but the story will be middle ages with a dragon.  They decided dragons were the ultimate bullies of the middle ages.  They’ve done some dress up trying to figure out characters, etc. Tuesday they wrote in their journals about possible characters or storylines and it was so fun to see what they came up with.

As you can tell I’m really impressed with the way this is going.  It has given me a terrific way to integrate their language arts.  I’m waiting to hear about a grant from Granite Education Foundation that would allow me to purchase midi keyboards to hook into my computers so they can play and compose on the computer.

from an e-mail on Feb 7, 2009:

We are having a BALL with this project.  Aaron has been a dream to work with as a composer and we are finalizing our last song this week.

We will be casting the opera this coming week and beginning rehearsals.

I wrote a grant and got midi keyboards the kids have been using to learn about writing music, as well as an additional $100 for sets/costumes/etc.

We are scheduled to perform at our school ARTS night, March 26.  This has been fun, but an interesting challenge since almost 1/3 of my class are non-English speakers or very limited English speakers.  For a while I thought we were going to be humming our songs!!  I also have people in our community (South Salt Lake) who are ready to support us so that should make rehearsing a little easier.

I am sending a rough copy of the script so you can see what the kids have helped produce.  They decided to call the show “Dragon Fable”.  Thanks again for this opportunity; we are truly having a good experience.