Saint David's Magazine Vol. 34 No 1 | Page 12

Grade 2 performing Huzzah! Huzzah! in March 2019. our boys and bring them to the level of competency that will make this opera a success. All of the previously mentioned skills: musical literacy, collaboration, and leadership, must come together as the students work to knit together a story that will be told in song. We compare Broadway shows and the opera. We speak of characterization and all of the historical elements involved in creating an opera. We discuss why opera singers sound the way they do, and the effect that lighting or scenery can have on an audience. We began this work in late September when three Metropolitan Opera artists and a fabulous pianist came to Saint David’s and talked through the story of La Bohème. They performed several arias from the opera, and they engaged the boys with questions about motives and characterization. Then, in October we paid a visit to the backstage of the Metropolitan Opera House. Boys saw the winding corridors filled with photographs of great singers of the past, they peered into the costume and wig shops, they spoke with some of the carpenters in the massive shop that builds the sets. They learned how four or five different operas can be put on that huge stage in one weekend. They heard stories of the superstitions of the singers, how a bent nail fortuitously found on the floor became an obsession for Luciano Pavarotti. They sat in a singer’s dressing room, and imagined how they would feel in one of the ornate costumes that sometimes weigh 20 pounds. They came away from that visit in awe of a world-class company that employs a thousand people working together as a team, respecting the 400-year- old operatic tradition. Several weeks later, we all saw the final dress rehearsal of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Met. This opera is famous for its tale of struggling artists in Paris, for the glorious music, and for the stunning sets that still send audiences into rapturous applause. I must say the boys also enjoyed the horse and donkey in their cameo roles, and they asked if we could have those in our opera as well. (We will, of the stuffed variety sitting on the piano). By the end, tragic as it might Respect is woven into music classes. be, the boys were so comfortable listening to those operatic voices, and so excited to begin their own operatic journey. They can’t wait to create something that reflects their understanding of our world and to let their voices be heard. From those three notes at the very beginning, to many, many more notes, words, costumes, sets, lights; all the elements that make the theater, and specifically opera, such an exciting art form. We look back with respect to the traditions of years ago, and we begin our own journey to the next level of musical creation at Saint David’s School. M Jeffrey Moore is Music Chair at Saint David’s School. 12  •  Saint David’s Magazine