Respecting Old Traditions and
Embracing the New: Creating an
Original Opera
By Jeffrey Moore
“Let’s start at the very beginning!
A very good place to start,
When you read you begin with A,B,C,
When you sing you begin with do-re-mi. Do-re-mi?”
- Rodgers and Hammerstein, from The Sound of Music
Y
es, do-re-mi, and if we start at the very beginning, with our Pre-K boys, that beginning includes building skills such
as playing rhythms, understanding music vocabulary, reading basic notation, active listening, and singing, singing,
singing. It is hard to believe that in six short years these young boys will be capable of writing and staging their own
opera! Yes, this year’s Fifth Grade is embarking on an adventure in the world of opera!
The music program at Saint David’s School builds on many long-standing traditions, and works to foster the utmost respect
for artists, composers, performers, ensembles of many varieties, and the Classical tradition. Boys in the school are constantly
building skills, learning to be performers themselves, gaining cultural literacy, and collaborating at the highest levels.
In Kindergarten classes, the boys learn to listen to a variety of instruments, to imagine different moods that an instrument’s
particular sound can produce. They bounce in time to slow or fast pieces; they learn to sing together as a group and to listen
carefully to each other’s voices so they can blend and sound as one. They learn to respect the process that these classes
demonstrate, and it all culminates in a fantastic Christmas extravaganza that we call Grandparents and Special Friends Day.
For some of these boys, this is their first experience in front of an audience, for others who graduated from Pre-K, they are
already seasoned veterans.
In First Grade, boys begin the year listening to “Peter and the Wolf,” the classic tale of a young boy who conquers the
big bad wolf set to stirring music by Prokofiev. They learn to sit still and engage in active listening, something that can be
10 • Saint David’s Magazine