Central Los Angeles : Students, Retirees Team Up to Create Opera

Eleventh and twelfth-grade students at Dorsey High School have teamed up with members of the Oasis-Baldwin Hills Senior Citizens Center and the Gwendolyn Wyatt Community Chorale to create and perform “Tree,” a new opera.

The production is being put on tonight at 7 at the Montgomery Auditorium at Dorsey High, 3537 Farmdale Ave.

The opera is the product of an eight-week collaboration with L.A. Opera as part of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera’s Intergenerational Residency Project.

The students in the opera are involved in Dorsey’s “Humanitas” program, which combines English, history and social studies, said Ellen Baker, the supervisor of the program. Together with the senior citizens group, they worked with artists from the L.A. Opera to learn libretto writing, composition and set design.

While the project promotes building relationships between older and younger people, it also is designed to introduce opera to different communities, said Llewellyn Crain, director of community programs with L.A. Opera.

“It gives people the experience of being a part of the development of a new piece, from its inceptions, and gets them excited about this creative process,” Crain said. . . .