Here is the URL for a very interesting article. A few quotes, below.
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/regional/ny-opera.html
The article is only on the site today (Saturday, April 22). If you miss it,
e-mail me
privately.
Peggy
"Four fifth-grade girls from Public School 314 escaped class one
recent afternoon in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, not to buy sweets at the
corner bodega, or to swap secrets over blush in the bathroom, but to slip
into a music room to work on their opera, a three-act (six-page) work involving
a popular
girl, a class clown and a meteorite blazing toward Earth. "
"By now, the four girls, who have been learning about "Tosca" and "Aida" since
kindergarten and attending performances at the Metropolitan Opera since third
grade, can
bat around opera terms like aficionados. "
"'This is really an opera seria, not an opera,' Kristina said, explaining that
an opera
seria is chock-full of arias and short on recitative, or sung dialogue. "
"Neither Kristina nor many of her classmates come from homes where parents and
grandparents listen to opera as daily background music. More than
three-quarters of the
1,918 students at P.S. 314, also known
as the Luis Muñoz Marín Elementary School, are Latin American and Caribbean,
and the
second largest ethnic group in the school is Chinese."
--
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
"Music for a While Shall All Your Cares Beguile"
mailto:peggyh@i...
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