A First Taste of Opera

Monday 16 May saw our first If Opera schools workshops with three artists spending a day at Writhlington School, Radstock, introducing nearly 500 young people aged between 5 and 15 to opera through music and conversation.

For most if not all the young people involved, this was their first experience of hearing opera, and it was wonderful to witness their engagement and see the impact of the performances first hand.

Soprano Meinir Wyn Roberts and baritone Kieran Rayner were accompanied by Charles Kilpatrick on the piano, and they shared arias and duets by composers ranging from Handel to Jonathan Dove via Puccini, Bizet and Léhar. Music was interspersed with questions from the children and young people, who were fascinated to know more about the mechanics of singing, how Meinir and Kieran managed to project their voices so powerfully, how and when they discovered they could sing, and about their experiences as performers.  The questions kept coming, and the Year 7 group in particular could have happily continued the conversation for twice as long as the allotted time!

The workshop formed part of the year-round Vital Art Music Programme at Writhlington School, which has been developed over the past seven years by Evelyn Strasburger in collaboration with Head of Music Jo Newland.  The programme ensures all pupils have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, and brings outstanding professional musicians to the school so that young people who might otherwise not have such opportunities are able to experience and be inspired by live classical music.  The workshops also enable young people to learn more about the careers of professional musicians, demystifying the profession and encouraging young people to consider a career in music themselves.

We now look forward to our Man in the Moon primary schools project in July, which we’re delivering  in collaboration with Charles Court Opera.  The Man in the Moon is a wonderful show with an environmental theme, created by John Savournin with original music by Samuel Bordoli.  We’ll be taking music and prop making workshops, together with singing assemblies and interactive performances into four primary schools in Wiltshire and Somerset as part of this project.