Opera & Literacy

Exploring the POSSIBILITIES

Opera = Literacy for all ages

• This is the point of it all.• http://www.operaomaha.org/community/operafore

veryone/

Opera is Viable Today

• A “spin” on opera that has much interest• http://www.operaphilly.org/education/hiphopera.s

html

Example of Technology in Use

• Click on what interests you. ( the “point” is high tech + high speed = high(er) interest.

• http://www.operaphilly.org/education/madama-butterfly/

N.E.A.National Endowment for the Arts

• How others are doing it.• http://www.nea.gov/grants/recent/disciplines/Oper

a/04opera.html

Art is Education

• Fusion of genres allow for multi-disciplinary engagement.

• Hence, multi-cultural participation.

• http://www.nea.gov/grants/recent/disciplines/Opera/04opera.html

The Visual Arts in “Action”

Virtual Opera

• One of my favorite examples of opera in the mainstream.

• These images came from a video still available named, Opera Imaginaire.

• My kids loved it and are still “connected” to it.

Example of Updating the Tales

• Students at Maxwell Elementary School got a glimpse of Little Red Riding Hood after an extreme makeover during a performance by the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre and Lexington Opera Society entitled “Little Red’s Most Unusual Day.”

• www.fcps.net/ news/stu/0506/5.htm

Opera for AllTechnology cannot be contained

• About 1,000 people sat on chairs behind metal barricades and red velvet ropes on Broadway.

• The MET OPERA CO. engages in Populism. (political doctrine or philosophy that aims to defend the interests of the common people against an entrenched, self-serving or corrupt elite)-Wikipedia

Opera and its’ Many Houses

This remnant of history is fundamentally an antique. At sunset, when everyone in attendance lights a candle (a custom at this theatre) the entire place becomes transfigured. The present meets the past. We become citizens of history. I know because I was there.

Arena di Verona(built in A.D.30)

The purpose of the aforementioned photos was to illustrate the significance of the relation opera and its’ geography has to history and culture.

In terms of literacy, the factors of opera’s origins and development, as well as its’ content and relevance in our society, provide a cornucopia of lessons that create the relationship of words not just to definition; but to meaning on many different levels.