Opera Holland Park, an opera company well-known to young British singers, is soon to become a familiar name to those aged 7 to 18, with the launch of its very first opera matinee for schools in June. Students and teachers will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the opera experience with a CPD workshop – conducted at their school by an OHP facilitator and members of the cast – plus a teacher training evening in April, and a resource pack.
For several years, OHP's Inspire programme has included a free ticket scheme for children over seven years-old, but this will be the first time it has attempted a project of this kind. The day will begin with the schools gathering in OHP's leafy grounds for a picnic and will finish with a full main stage production of La Traviata and the chance to meet the cast and ask some burning questions.
Breaking the rules
‘I'm breaking all my regular rules, such as when they take their curtain call at the end I'm going to ask them just to go off stage and go straight out into the auditorium,’ says James Clutton, OHP's director of opera. ‘We really want that engagement and interaction there, so they can recognise the people on stage and feel like they really were a part of it,’ adds Lucy Curtis, the Inspire programme coordinator.
This is all part of OHP's vision for making opera an everyday experience and, as general director Michael Volpe puts it: ‘making the extraordinary ordinary’.
‘We want it to be very relaxed,’ says Curtis, ‘there isn't going to be too much of the “shushes”.’
To some, the concept of a thousand children sitting through a full-length opera would seem ludicrous, but to Volpe, whose educational experience has been far from ordinary, it is the least we can hope for: ‘We don't expect enough of kids, we don't trust them enough about what they're capable of absorbing, analysing, learning – not that this is a terribly high bar for them to jump over; we want them just to come along and enjoy something that they wouldn't ordinarily.’
‘I think we need to teach kids to be audience members,’ Volpe says. ‘Not everything you do has to be this great, incredible learning experience; it doesn't have to be participatory – although we are going to make this that – you do just need to learn to sit and absorb and be enriched by something.’
‘If you've got a kid that comes out and even if they're not outwardly exploding, at least they know opera's for them, they know they can come back to it,’ says Curtis.
Something for everyone
Whether the students feel they want to pursue a career in the industry as a result of watching the performance or are simply enchanted by the spectacle, there is something for everyone to take away – and also the option to take it or leave it.
‘We really want kids to go home and speak to their parents and say “I got it”, have that pride in themselves,’ says Curtis. ‘We're doing a full-stage performance – it's not going to be changed, it's not going to be patronising in any way.’
Students will be able to familiarise themselves with the work, witness the process of staging a production from book to boards, through the workshop and resource pack, with media clips from the rehearsal room and ‘get up and move about’ activities – and teachers will gain knowledge and skills they can use in the classroom.
So why La Traviata? Which aspects will be relevant to young people? Volpe says: ‘Everything and nothing I suppose – depending on the age and experience of the kid, who knows? I think that's sort of the fun of it really; kids do draw from it what they want, as do we as adults. We are a bit worried in this country about “art for art's sake”, learning for learning's sake.’
It is safe to say OHP's school matinee will be a memorable experience. With applications already received, the majority from state schools within the local borough, OHP is set to put on a performance that will raise the roof.