Loveland Opera appeals to younger audience
Thompson School District students are being exposed to a cultural product that at first glance, they likely would not enjoy — opera.
Surprisingly enough, they love it.
The Loveland Opera Theatre, thanks to a grant from the Dahlen Educational Outreach Program, is spending 10 years treating children as young as kindergartners to high culture in the form of an operatic performance of “The Three Little Pigs,” and kids can’t get enough.
Students at Namaqua Elementary School in Loveland, where the company visited Thursday, were laughing and clapping along with the performers and after the show had plenty of questions. They included, “Does it hurt your voice to sing that loud?” and, “How do you make those sounds?”
“I think people underestimate how much opera has so many aspects to it that can catch people’s interest,” said Tim Kennedy, artistic director at the Loveland Opera, who directed the show.
“Between the colorful
sets and the costumes and the music and the acting.”
The show, while geared toward children, has plenty of jokes for older viewers, as well as opera fans.
“I graduated ‘ sooie cum laude,’” said Despina,
played by Kelsey Furst, the pig who was bright enough to build her house out of bricks rather than straw or sticks, and whose name is a reference to another Mozart opera.
The joke didn’t particularly
land with the largely preadolescent audience, which also did not catch references like the fact that the Big Bad Wolf was named “Wolfgang Bigbad,” a reference to Mozart, or that there were pieces in the show copied directly from such operas as “Don Giovanni” and “The Magic Flute.”
The show, written by former opera singer John Davies with children in mind, is in English, like many performances at the Loveland Opera, making it more accessible to adults and kids alike.
Introducing people to the art form is part of the mission of the Loveland Opera Theatre, said Juliana Hoch, executive director of the company.
“Education is the future of opera,” Hoch said. “It’s very important to me and to Tim Kennedy to educate children so that they’ll grow up loving opera, because they’re our future audience members.”
Equally important, said Kennedy after the show, was helping to train the young singers, who make up a large portion of the company.
Part of this training is truly projecting their voices, which can be difficult when singing opera in an echo- filled elementary school gymnasium
“The majority of our singers are younger people who are just starting their careers, and it’s a really great training for them to really learn how to make their voices speak, and to engage children,” Kennedy said.
“Children are the greatest audience, because you know immediately whether they like what you’re doing. They don’t just politely clap.”
That was evident during the performance — when a pig stomped on the big bad wolf’s foot, the students roared with laughter, and when he knocked on the door, they screamed at the pigs not to let him in.
But the more serious elements of the show — such as when Colin Williamson, who played Wolfgang Bigbad, sang the climax of Don Giovanni, in English and as he prepared to blow down a house — also managed to transfix the preteens in the audience.
“There’s this idea that opera has to be proper and stingy, and that you can’t react,” Williamson said. “Getting the audience to laugh and play along is so much fun.”