A Night at the Opera, for Children and a Phantom
ROME — In the pitch-dark auditorium of the Teatro Costanzi, a high-pitched lament floated from the top galleries. Dozens of flashlights snapped on, seeking the source of the sound.
The shafts of light homed in on a spectral figure — a slim, dark-haired woman dressed in white, moving at a funereal pace and plaintively singing. In the audience, about 130 children, ages 8 to 10, let loose squeals, gasps, and one “it’s not real.” Several called out “Emma, Emma.”
The children had been told that the Costanzi, Rome’s opera house, had a resident phantom — the spirit of Emma Carelli, an Italian soprano who managed the theater a century ago and loved it so much that she was loath to leave it, even in death.
“The theater is a place where strange things happen, where what is impossible becomes possible,” Francesco Giambrone, the Costanzi’s general manager, told the children that Saturday afternoon when they arrived for a get-toknow-the-theater sleepover.
Music education ranks as a low priority in Italy, the country that invented opera and gave the world some of its greatest composers. Many experts, including Mr. Giambrone, say their country has rested on its considerable laurels rather than cultivate a musical culture that encourag
es students to learn about their illustrious heritage.
With little backing from schools or lawmakers, arts organizations like the Costanzi have concluded that it is up to them to reach out to the young.
Mr. Giambrone has tried to make opera more familiar and accessible — especially to children — by abandoning the genre’s strict dress code and holding events like the sleepover.
“We believe that the theater should be for everyone,” Mr. Giambrone said in an interview, “and that it should make people feel at home.”
At the sleepover, more than half of the children belonged to scout troops from Rome’s outlying neighborhoods. Others came from disadvantaged neighborhoods. Most had never visited the theater before.
“Between video games, cellphones and Netflix, there’s tough competition to get kids interested in beautiful things,” said Armando Cereoli, one of the parents.
The Costanzi runs several outreach programs for the homeless or people who live in Rome’s most far-flung neighborhoods, a way to broaden the theater’s reach, said Andrea Bonadio, who works on such programs at the opera house.
Nunzia Nigro, the theater’s director for marketing and education, who helped organize the sleepover, said several children who had participated in the theater’s educational programs over the past 25 years were loyal patrons today.
“We’re beginning to reap some of those efforts, and have a younger public,” she said.
On the Saturday of the sleepover, the children watched part of a rehearsal for an upcoming performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony — “the conductor uses a wand to direct music, not so different from Harry Potter’s but more important,” Ms. Nigro said. They learned how the staff cleaned the world’s biggest chandelier in a historic building, and they got to know the intricacies of the theater via a treasure hunt.
Emma the phantom — Valentina Gargano, a soprano in the opera’s young artists program — made an encore, exacting a promise from the children that they would tell their friends about “this magic place” and come back when they grew up.
One girl had been so convinced that Ms. Gargano was a real ghost that the organizers made sure they met when the soprano was in street clothes.
After being serenaded with music, including Brahms’ classic lullaby, the children settled down (or tried to) in sleeping bags on an artificial green lawn used in a previous production of Madama Butterfly. Above them loomed oversize photos of some of the stars who performed at the Costanzi, like Maria Callas, Herbert von Karajan and Rudolf Nureyev.
On Sunday, the children designed colorful paper ballet costumes, learned basic ballet positions, sang as part of a choir and played an opera-themed version of snakes and ladders.
After a group singalong and photo, it was almost time to head home.
“Did you have fun?” Mr. Giambrone asked the children. “Yes!” they cheered. “Did you sleep well?” he asked, to a more mixed response. Several “No”s were heard.
Come back soon, he said. After hugging his parents who had come to pick him up, Andrea Quadrini, almost 11, could not wait to tell them that the treasure hunt had been especially fun.
“Wow,” he said. “I saw an opera theater for the first time.”