Barber of Seville

The Hawaii Opera Theatre has a student opera program called Opera for Everyone. Students are able to buy tickets to dress rehersals and see performances of full operas. Last year we saw Madame Butterfly. I think that it may have been the best possible introductions to the opera. Not only were the students in the audience open in their response the the events on stage (cheering and laughing) but they even booed the tenor who played Pinkerton at the curtain call. I think he was surprised by the response, but not at all disappointed.

This year we'll be attending The Barber of Seville. So I've been hunting down some resources to help us prep a little more than we did last year.

The Boston Lyric Opera performed a children's version of Barber of Seville. They have a recommended reading and listening list for opera and a study guide for opera as well as short articles about Rossini and the background to the opera. Links to all of their supporting materials for the opera are here. The study guide has background info on opera styles, voice types and audience ettiquette. Then it moves into the background of the Barber of Seville and includes a liberetto for the children's version that they performed. The second half of the study guide are activities that relate to the opera. It includes poetry lessons, geography lessons, recipes for Spanish dishes and much more (even math and science lessons). It seems like it might make a nice basis for a unit study on opera.

There is also the Opera for Everyone program from OperaGlass. You can download versions of four operas as well as teacher's guides. This program covers not only The Barber of Seville but also Madame Butterfly, Carmen and La Traviata.

Fresh2Opera has a modern twist on opera education. You can also stream audio of the opera.

Finally, Online Insights from the Florentine Opera (in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) has a Barber of Seville study guide that offers background based on how much time you have (5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour and more than 1 hour). A nice option if you are driving to the opera in an hour or want something to look over while you wait for the house lights to go down. This guide includes some parallel text lyrics. The lessons build on each other, so if you are doing one of the longer lessons, don't skip the shorter ones that come before.

If you know of any other great opera resources, I'd love to hear about them.