Student-Produced Opera
The Santa Fe Opera has joined with Santa Fe Public Schools to bring Student Produced Opera into the school day. The resulting Arts Integration Partnership is a standards-based arts integration program. Teaching artists from The Santa Fe Opera are now paired with classroom teachers to work in collaborations that reinforce connections between the arts and core academic subjects by strengthening standards-based arts instruction in the classroom, integrating standards-based performing arts education into the core elementary school curriculum and, ultimately, improving the academic performance of students in these subjects, including skills in creating, performing, and responding to the Arts. This year, thirty-one classrooms are participating in the program.
The Santa Fe Opera continues to work with other school districts as well including our successful partnership with Rio Rancho Public Schools and residency programs in Gallup and Mountainair.
Guided by theater and composer artists-in-residence, children begin by drawing from their imaginations, popular literature and culture, and social or historical themes, as well as personal mythologies, for the subjects of their own operas. Once the stories are complete and set to music, the children design and build their costumes and scenery. They then are cast in roles and work sessions become "rehearsals."
Every year there are approximately 20 Student-Produced Operas in communities throughout the state of New Mexico. To date, more than 12,000 children have produced 175 operas, performing to audiences of parents, classmates, and friends totaling nearly 50,000 people. Upcoming Student Produced Opera Festival performances include:
SANTA FE
Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 6:00pm, Scottish Rite Masonic Center, 463 Paseo de Peralta
RIO RANCHO
Middle School Festival, Wednesday, November 30, 2011, 6:00pm, Rio Rancho High School
Check back soon for additional Rio Rancho festival dates!
For more information, e-mail Director of Education Andrea Walters or call 505-986-5955.
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