Article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 5, 2000.
Aria ready for an opera with recess?
Youths create drama complete with marshmallow props
Wednesday, April 5, 2000
By REBEKAH DENN
Worried about their graying audience, opera boosters have spent years trying to attract a younger crowd.
Just wait until they hear about the 8- to 10-year-old opera buffs from Alternative Elementary II in Seattle.
The 23 pupils in teacher Jo Vos' class have created their own opera, composing everything from plot to music to lyrics to stage sets.
They performed their two-act production (with one 10-minute intermission, a k a morning recess) before an enthusiastic audience of kindergarten through second-grade classmates yesterday.
The formal debut of their creation, "The Hike," will be at 6:45 p.m. tomorrow at the Wedgwood-area school at 7711 43rd Ave. N.E. The public is welcome.
The pupils eschewed some classic opera themes -- no deaths, no romance -- but wowed yesterday's audience with their drama set at summer camp, complete with tangled story lines about problem siblings, the nature of friendship and the consequences of breaking the rules. The underlying message: Your family can embarrass you, but they love and support you, too.
The classroom family of performers, chorus members and production crew was completely unembarrassed by the unusual experience of singing their hearts out before a crowd.
"I'm used to singing only in front of my parents. (But) after a while, I got used to people coming," fourth-grader Annie Hogan said.
Pupils projected their voices, harmonized on cue, and used the body language and stage presence they learned from Vos and from Terri Richter, an artist in residence who has sung with the Seattle Opera.
"Next come the arias," fourth-grader Anna Colwell promised during the intermission. She should know: Colwell played one of the leading characters and was on the team that composed music from lyrics written by other pupils.
Colwell sings in her church choir, but had never composed before. Where did the tunes come from? "I guess just our imaginations," she said.
There was plenty of that.
The youngsters may have created the only existing opera to ever feature glittery marking pens and marshmallows as props, the word "dude" as a rhyming device, and a plot twist involving a ferry ramming the Anacortes dock. They seemed as proud of their hard work as the parents who shouted "bravo!" and gave a standing ovation from the back of the lunchroom yesterday.
"It's just amazing," said fourth-grade scene stealer Alex Dugdale, who played a tap-dancing camp counselor. Dugdale has experience both dancing and acting, but said opera is "something I've never done before."
Vos brought opera to the pupils' level -- which included more spoken lines and less music than the typical version -- after successfully applying for training from the New York's Metropolitan Opera Guild.
"I'm passionate about music, and I don't think there's enough in children's lives," Vos said. AEII offers a limited instrumental music program, with no music teacher at the school.
There are 560 schools worldwide participating in the Metropolitan education program, including Seattle Country Day School, Guild program director Shellie Bransford said.
Vos went through the training with visual arts teacher Cathy Taggett last summer. A grant from the Nesholm Family Foundation helped pay for Richter's work, materials, extra hours for Taggert, and the assistance of accompanist Bob Kechley, whose son Murren Kechley-Kennedy played violin in the production. AEII, a Seattle public school, focuses on integrating academics around hands-on themes that emphasize writing, visual and performing arts.
In this case, opera permeated every subject in Vos' class. They studied the physics of sound, the anatomy of human vocals, the history of the eras in the operas they studied, the proper way to write a business letter describing their work.
In the fall, they studied Mozart's "The Magic Flute" and visited the Seattle Opera production.
The Seattle Opera has an active opera education program, but it focuses on high school students, who have a greater attention span, said education associate Jonathan Dean, who has spoken before Vos' class.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER