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Student production
The River Where We Dream
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Since 1991, the Student Produced Opera program has provided children throughout
northern New Mexico an opportunity to set their own stories to music. Children
on the Cochiti and Santa Clara Pueblos began by writing and producing two bilingual
operas based on Native American folk tales. Since then, the program has given
rise to many operas with Native American themes, as well as several bilingual
operas. Led by teams of artists-in-residence, students and teachers are immersed
in the creative process, choosing and adapting a story, composing the music,
creating costumes and scenery, rehearsing, and finally performing their opera.
Every year there are approximately 25 Student Produced Opera projects
in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Bernalillo, Rio Rancho and other communities throughout
the state. Each spring the operas written and produced during the school year
are presented to proud families and the public in festival performances.
In
2006, a grant from The History Channel helped underwrite The
Fall of the Enemy, an opera created by Carlos Gilbert Elementary School
students about Many Mountains Surrounding a World War II internment camp for
Japanese-Americans located in Santa Fe.
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