Sixth Graders Introduced to Opera

Published: May 12, 1996

CHILDREN somehow know that they are not supposed to like opera. Why do the singers sound so funny? they ask. Why do they have to sing in foreign languages? Why are they so fat?

The conductor Robert Ashens meets these reactions head on when he introduces opera to schoolchildren. "I haven't come here to make you like opera," he told an audience of sixth graders at the Isaac E. Young Middle School here recently. He had come, he said, simply to show them what opera is: spectacular storytelling set to music, an art form with a 500-year-old Western tradition.

To begin the program, which was sponsored by the Westchester Hudson Opera Company, Mr. Ashens introduced a soprano who might have come from the set of the students' favorite television show. Young and long-haired, wearing a short, scoop-necked dress and black tights and heels, Lielle Sara Berman was not quite the helmeted, oversize Brunhilda they might have been expecting.

But when she started to sing, the titters began on cue. As her high voice filled the auditorium with "I Could Have Danced All Night" from "My Fair Lady," some students exchanged amused looks. A few girls in the front row covered their mouths and giggled.

"You know, singing is very physical," Mr. Ashens said when Ms. Berman finished. "We had the microphone available for Lielle to use, but she didn't need it. Let's see what the same song sounds like with a microphone." As Ms. Berman, a student at the Mannes School of Music in Manhattan, sang at full volume into the microphone, the students clapped their hands over their ears and laughed at the crackling, distorted sound. The point, Mr. Ashens said, was to be aware that microphones change the quality of a voice -- at rock and jazz concerts as well as on Broadway.

Then he introduced the tenor James Howell, also a student at Mannes, who sang an evocative Mozart aria. Mr. Howell, a heartthrob in true operatic tradition, swept through the audience, kneeling beside giggling girls, taking hold of their hands and looking beseechingly into their eyes as he sang. Mr. Ashens did not wait for the hilarity to subside before giving an explanation of breath control. Soon, the students were pressing their diaphragms and making "ah" sounds.

They listened attentively when Ms. Berman sang an aria from Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet" and jumped up to join a parade through the auditorium led by Mitchell Piper, a baritone. When Mr. Ashens asked for a boy to join Ms. Berman at the front of the room, dozens of hands went up. Chris Caro, who was chosen, kept a straight face as the soprano sang a dramatic aria in English encompassing all the emotions of love.

When Mr. Piper, a professional singer with a deep resonant voice, sang a compelling aria from Wagner's "Walkure," hearty applause, not laughter, followed. Then, in a lighter mood, Mr. Howell sang "It Ain't Necessarily So" from Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," inviting the students to join in the scat portions. "Zim bam doodle-oo," he sang, "Zim bam doodle-oo," they answered, performing their parts with gusto.

Mr. Ashens, the resident conductor of the Connecticut Opera, left the audience with a message: "Opera is still alive, not something in a museum," he said. "We've got operas about baseball and about everything. Opera exists all over the world, in every country."

Franco Gratale, artistic director of the Westchester Hudson Opera Company, said later that going backstage as a child had led him to a career in the arts. "You see people's hair come off; people were pulling off their beards, I couldn't believe it!" he said. "In that madness, I said, 'This is what I want to do.' Bringing singers close to children, letting artists mingle with the audience, allowed such magic to take hold."

Not all the students here were strangers to opera; Thelma Esteves, the principal of Isaac Young, said some of the children had seen Donizetti's "Daughter of the Regiment" at the Metropolitan Opera as a school activity. Steve Van Ness, education director of Westchester Hudson Opera, said the program was the first phase of a larger effort scheduled to continue in the fall. The group also performed this year at Roosevelt High School in Yonkers and at the Washington Performing Arts Elementary School in Mount Vernon. Mr. Van Ness said the Westchester Arts Council had helped identify the schools that could most benefit from the program.