London operas reach out to kids

Many kids identify with the raw emotions displayed in opera, with its torrid tales of love, rejection, death, swapped brides and revolution. After all, some children express the same range of tantrums and tears every day.

Perhaps even more than some adults, kids can get swept up in blood-and-thunder melodramas such as Bizet’s “Carmen” and comedies such as Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” Large casts, sumptuous costumes and spectacular sets certainly help.

London’s opera companies are seeking to bolster their audience by reaching out to parents with free or discounted tickets for young people. The English National Opera also holds workshops in which kids write songs, make costumes and act in scenes to help them connect with the characters and themes.

Sarah Wesley was nervous about taking her 4-year-old daughter, Mya, to a performance of Giordano’s “Andrea Chenier” at Opera Holland Park in early August. The story of class and love during the French Revolution was performed in Italian.

“Every time the music starts and people start running out, she sits up,” Wesley said as her daughter ate a piece of cake during intermission. “She’s really taking it in.”

Mya insisted that she wanted to stay until the end of the 2 1/2 -hour performance, which would finish after 10 p.m. “There’s a lot to watch,” she said.

To help get kids into top productions, the Royal Opera offers tickets to school groups for selected matinees at less than $11. Opera Holland Park gave out 800 free tickets this summer to kids ages 9 to 18 who live near the west London park where the performances are staged. The company also visits a local primary school and invites children to dress rehearsals.

Fifteen-year-old Kyle MacDonald-Gall used the free tickets to accompany his opera-loving dad to four of the six operas staged in the park this summer. He particularly enjoyed Verdi’s “Macbeth,” he said, because “I already knew the story.”

He also attended the performance of “Andrea Chenier,” which opened with a loud chop of the guillotine that foreshadowed the fate of the lovers at the opera’s end.

MacDonald-Gall was entranced by the angry mobs waving sticks on stage. He rarely glanced at the surtitles, or boards displaying an English translation of the libretto as it’s sung. (A sample: “Sublime moment of love! The ardent soul defies all terror.”)

Not every kid takes to opera, of course. Parents might want to avoid the long works of Wagner, for example, and stick to pieces with strong story lines and simpler melodies.

To help them along, the English National Opera has hosted family events in conjunction with productions such as Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” as well as “The Barber of Seville.” The company hosted one in June for Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” a story of love, dueling and regret among Russian high society, that brought together about 50 kids, ages 5 to 14, and about 30 participating adults in the lobby and bar areas of the London Coliseum.

First, the kids reviewed the plot and were separated into three groups playing aristocrats, servants and party crashers. Each group did a drama exercise, made costumes and wrote a song about the plight of their characters.

The aristocrats made epaulets and tiaras from brocade and glittery fabrics. The servants made props of food trays and learned how to dip down and serve them in a line.

For the songwriting session, the servants were gathered around a piano and asked to shout out what it felt like to work in a kitchen. Then Matthew Sharp, the facilitator, began to weave their words together.

“Hot, sweaty, smelly,” he sang in a rapid staccato. “Is there a tune in there?” Together, they wrote a few phrases about hard work and then came up with some slower lines about their dreams of escape.

The kids then acted out a party scene with the help of several cast members and two soloists. They rushed in wearing their costumes and sang their parts, with members of the company providing the harmony.

Wyn Pencarreg, a baritone, and soprano Anthea Kempston sang extracts from the third act, in which Onegin declares his love and is rejected. The kids dropped down on their knees, open-jawed, as the singers’ booming voices filled the room. When they finished, the kids cheered and hooted.

Then the crowd was invited to rewrite the sad ending of the opera. After a moment of deliberation, the kids decided to allow the couple to dance and run away together. Certainly none of them had missed the plot.

“Throwing children into opera cold is very, very hard,” said Margery Hyde, who attended with her two grandchildren. The event taught the kids how opera tells a story and will help them avoid the fate of her own son, whom she took to the opera for the first time when he was 17.

“He didn’t like it,” she said. “He was too old.”