Rain Forest Rumble

Haley's 3rd grade class wrote and performed an opera. I'm still amazed by the whole process. The Opera by Children program goes into schools and helps the kids with the whole thing. First, the kids brainstormed and came up with characters, a setting and a storyline. A music mentor recorded them singing the different parts the way they thought it should be sung and then he strung it all together and wrote a score. The kids planned and painted the scenery, choreographed the whole thing, decided which parts they wanted to be, learned the entire 15 minute score and then performed it several times for different audiences. Their teacher, Natalie Merrill, obviously helped them through the process but I was amazed as I watched her leave the decisions up to them. She wanted this to truly be their opera. The costumes were amazing, thanks to many creative parents, and I had the fun job of teaching the kids the music and accompanying them on the piano.

The storyline was funny, too, since it was the kids' idea. A group of famous people are flying to a "famous people convention." They end up having to jump from their plane before it crashes into the Amazon Rain Forest, where they meet all of the animals, bugs and plants that live there. At first, no one gets along but then they all work together and end up as friends. These are some of my favorite lines from the opera:

* "We're sooo famous!"
* "Let's skedaddle before they eat us."
* "Those are homosapiens!"
* "We have gorgeous hair! We paid trillions for this hair."
* "We don't care about our fans anymore -- let's have a Rain Forest convention!"

The characters that the kids chose were so great, too. The famous people were Einstein, Hannah Montana, Taylor Swift, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes & Princess Leia. Haley was a black widow. There was a dung beetle, a leaf bug, a walking stick bug, a Venus fly trap, a gila monster, a milipede, tropical birds and animals... The whole thing was such a great experience!