Utah Opera and the Kennedy Center Imagination Celebration at Salt Lake City present a celebration of original opera projects in utah elementary schools. These projects are developed in the classroom under the direction of the teachers and written and composed by the students (with help from composers sponsored by Utah Symphony & Opera).

Three schools’ productions, evolving out of the teachers’ experience in the “Music! Words! Opera!” workshop, are highlighted each April in performance in the Jeanne Wagner Theatre at the Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Salt Lake City. This year’s Showcase will take place on April 9, 2008 in the Jeanné Wagner Theatre.

Press Release

SALT LAKE CITY —Utah Opera and the Kennedy Center Imagination Celebration at Salt Lake City will give local elementary school students a chance to take the spotlight in the sixth annual Children’s Opera Showcase, on Wednesday, March 28, in the Jeanné Wagner Theatre of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center (138 West 300 South) beginning at 6:30 pm. Children collaborate with local composers and their teachers to write original stories and music for each opera. Then the children become the stars of the show, singing their own operas with their own sets and costumes.

The evening will begin with a first-grade class from Salt Lake’s Dilworth Elementary School performing their opera, Tooth Trouble. Their teacher and opera project leader, Suzanne Parry, reports that each child in the class had the opportunity to participate in creating both words and music. The opera is about the Tooth Fairy, who is magically changed into a chocolate bar. Later, she returns to her normal self. Utah Opera hired composer Michelle Willis to work with the class to help give form to the students’ musical ideas.

The Showcase’s second opera will begin at approximately 7:00 p.m. Micekateers Save the Day! will feature two third-grade classes from Layton’s Mountain View Elementary, led in their work by teachers Marty Lind and Myndee Moulton. To create the story for their opera, groups of students began stories and then exchanged papers with other groups, until they had all contributed to the various story lines. Then they voted to select the most exciting story and made it into an opera. Composer/Utah Opera Intern Amber Masterson helped the students create their musical ideas. Of special interest is The Cat Dance Song called "Good Times"; it was written by Amber Masterson and will be played on the piano by Morgan Shaw.

The final opera in this year’s Showcase will be presented by a fourth-grade class from Salt Lake’s Highland Park Elementary, led by teacher Pieter Lingen and student teacher Kelleen Leslie. This class studied the elements of mystery stories, and then wrote their own. After they read everyone’s story aloud, they selected as the basis for their opera the story by Brikelle Peers which had been inspired by a picture by Chris Van Allsburg. The opera is titled He Warned Her Not To…. Students were assisted in musical composition by school music specialist and composer Jennifer Purdy.

Tickets are not required, and admission for this event is free, but seating is limited. For more information about the Children’s Opera Showcase, please contact Paula Fowler at (801) 869-9090.

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Paula Fowler, Director of Education and Community Outreach, believes that the Children’s Opera Showcase challenges students to develop a variety of skills.

“When students are involved with their teachers in an original opera project, they improve their skills in all the arts involved as well as in the skill of collaboration,” says Fowler. “They work together to come up with a story, write text that will be sung and spoken, and create melodies and sounds that will express the emotions of each scene.”

Students gain much from accomplishing this challenging task, according to Fowler.

“One student working on an opera project about the American Revolution a few years ago told her teacher that the class couldn't write a particular song until they figured out how the people involved in the incident felt. Students know both the frustration of trying to find their way to an expression that matches their vision, and the gratifying sense of reward that is shared when the final group goal is achieved.”