Schools' Opera Project

New Sussex Opera is eager to inspire children to sing and explore the world of opera. As well as having involved children from local primary schools in some past productions we have run a number of workshops for them. With our Schools’ Opera Project we now aim to go into the schools themselves and run educational and fun workshops there. 

In May 2018 we ran a highly successful workshop on Donizetti’s Elixir of Love at South Malling CE Primary, Lewes. We continued our partnership with South Malling in June 2019 by running two workshops for Year 4 pupils, this time based on Gluck’s Orfeo ed EuridiceThe second workshop culminated in an enthusiastic performance by the children to their parents and the rest of the school. 

In an exciting development the D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust generously gave us funding to run further opera workshops in the school year 2019-20. This time we invited children to experience opera from the inside by guiding them through singing and staging the children’s chorus from Bizet’s Carmen.

West Blatchington Primary (Hove) and Peter Gladwin (Portslade) participated in this project, and we are also in touch with a number of other local primary schools. If you are connected to a school and are interested in our Schools’ Opera Project, do please get in touch.

“All the children expressed their enjoyment in taking part in the project. Their feedback also reflected the positive impact of the project on their confidence and self-esteem”. (School music teacher)

“A great success! I couldn’t recommend more highly this unique opportunity for school children of all ages and abilities to explore the real world of opera in a fun, exciting and stimulating way”. (School music teacher)

“I found learning the opera was amazing and inspiring to do it. I learnt such a lot about singing opera”. (workshop participant)

“It made me feel like I was in another world”….. “I thought it was really good… and I’m really proud of myself”. (workshop participants)

Of the previous workshop the school music teacher said: “It was such joy to watch the children so enthused and happy about singing! You and your team pitched the session perfectly for the age group and the fast pace helped maintain their engagement throughout.”  

We would like to take these workshops to more Sussex primary schools.  If you are connected to a school and are interested in our Schools’ Opera Project or if you would like to support it, please contact us. We would love to hear from you.

Photos by David Sears

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