spynotes ::
  November 13, 2006
The fat lady

This weekend there was a giant ad in the New York Times for a production of Mozart�s Die Zauberfl�te: �IMAGINE,� it said, �your child at the Met!� As if it were the most unfathomable concept in the world. The ad also referred to the opera by its friendlier (to Americans) English title that sounds like a children�s book itself: The Magic Flute. This is because the Met is doing the opera in English � an almost unheard of event for the Met. Even more amazing is that the Met has abridged the opera, reduced to a mere 90 minutes �The Met�s first holiday family opera presentation.�

All this is, in my opinion, a good thing. Kids should grow up thinking opera is fun, because it is. It�s spectacle, it�s excitement and it�s lovely.

The Magic Flute may indeed be one of the best operas for children, thanks to its Masonic imagery disguised as an elaborate fantasy world. There are dragons and queens of the night. There are bird catchers who sing like birds. There is magic. It was the first opera I remember seeing. I was probably around 10 or 11. The performances was acted by the Salzburg Marionetten with recorded (I think) accompaniment.

But in some ways I�m not sure how much we need to cater to children to get them to like opera. They are, in many respects, better prepared than grown-ups. Sure, reducing the duration of opera helps with wiggly kids whose feet get tired of not touching the ground when sitting in seats that do interesting things like fold when you stand up. But without my interference, AJ is already more familiar with opera than some of my college students seem to be, because for kids, opera is everywhere. Opera is on his favorite Bugs Bunny and Animaniacs videos. It�s on his friend D�s toy tank, which plays �The Ride of the Valkyries� at the press of a button, usually as accompaniment to rolling over a city�s worth of toy people. It�s on AJ�s Sit �n� Spin. And then there�s AJ�s favorite TV show, �The Wonder Pets,� which is entirely an opera (or perhaps operetta since a few lines are spoken instead of sung), complete with orchestral accompaniment and recitative.

The problem isn�t that kids aren�t ready for opera. The problem is that grownups aren�t ready to take them. And at ticket prices upwards of $100 a seat, that�s no big surprise (The Met�s website notes that $12 standing room tickets are available. I found myself wondering what they�d do with a boatload of five-year-olds whining and spinning in circles and playing tag in their standing room section.)

When we were discussing Wagner last week in my class, I told them that the problem I had with teaching classes like this is that it seems to support the misconception that you need classes like this to listen to music, that classical music is a chore, something to be studied, work.

For AJ, though, and for me as a child as well, it is pure pleasure. He doesn�t discriminate between musical genres in much the way he doesn�t discriminate between races. He notices the differences and sometimes wants to learn about a given genre and the qualities that define it � he early identified bluegrass with anything banjo and he now can define blues independently of jazz or rock genres. But the differences are just that � differences. There is no ranking, no hierarchy, no better than. Opera is one of many options.

We teach our children through singing. We sing lullabies, we sing songs and chant rhymes to help them remember things. AJ and most of his friends regularly make up songs about anything and nothing as a way to express themselves, to talk about their days -- for a fantastic example from freshhell's almost-six-year-old daughter Dusty, click here. The idea of singing instead of speaking is not as foreign to their experience. AJ and I sometimes spend a morning singing all of our conversations, an activity inspired by The Wonder Pets� recitative standard, �The phone, the phone is ringing,� a phrase that moves from tonic to dominant in an expectant way, a phrase demanding resolution. Then we sing songs about brushing our teeth, about getting dressed. It is but a small step to singing about catching birds or fighting dragons or magic flutes. Imagine that.

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