Year 3 had the amazing enrichment opportunity of working alongside four professional musicians as part of their curriculum music focus this term, Music Theatre. During the hour-long workshop with two choral scholars (an organ scholar and the Singing Partnerships Lead from Canterbury Cathedral Music's outreach programme) the children had: a whistle-stop tour of the origins and basic structure of opera; discovered the many similarities and some differences between operas and musicals; learned about classification and names of voices according to pitch range; and found out about typical characters that each voice part might play.
The children also participated in a fun movement activity reinforcing musical vocabulary for Tempo as well as practising performance skills of working as a cast / team in a balanced space. After listening (in awe!) and appraising (with impressively thoughtful comments and appropriate musical language) live performances of opera arias in Italian and German, they all then had the experience of experimenting with expressing different emotions in song with a very lively and dramatic game of 'Twinkle, Twinkle - Instant Opera'!
The workshop finished with a question and answer session to the professionals. The children were able to find out how to become a singer (practise a lot and don't give up!); where in the world the singers had performed (all sorts of exciting travel opportunities); whether you can choose which voice you want to be (no, we are all individuals and born with our own unique sound); do they get anxious or scared when they sing (yes!!) and can you come back and work with us again? (absolutely!).
They are all now looking forward to using their new knowledge, skills and enthusiasm to create their own performance of a scene from Humperdinck's opera 'Hansel and Gretel'. Please check out photos of the workshop below:
