Opera for the Young Opera for the Young Opera for the Young is a professional, touring opera company based in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded in 1970, it brings professional opera programs to elementary schools throughout the Midwest during its spring and fall tours. With nearly 200 performances, reaching approximately 70,000 children annually, Opera for the Young can be counted among the largest opera outreach programs in the nation. Opera for the Young’s repertoire include age appropriate adaptations of Gretry's "Beauty and the Beast", Massenet's "Cinderella", Mozart's "The Magic Flute", Rossini's "The Barber of Seville", Dvořák's "Rusalka", Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel", Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love",
Libretto of The Magic Flute to draw a generalized observation from the proceedings on stage in order to promote virtue or condemn vice." Cairns attributes a taste for "didactic sentiment" specifically to the Viennese popular theater. Concerning "The Magic Flute" specifically, Rosen writes that it "develops ... a conception of music as a vehicle for simple moral truths." The opera's didacticism is concentrated in passages of poetry, set in the ensemble scenes, in which the characters cease to converse with each other and join in singing an edifying lesson to the audience. One example is found in the first act, just after Monostatos and his