School Outreach Plays On U.S. Opera Surge

Jan. 3, 2005 — -- More Americans are going to see live opera now than ever before, but when mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves performs for kids, they're still in for a surprise.

"More often than not, I hear from young people, 'I had no idea that that's what the opera was. I had no idea that it was like this. I was expecting something very boring. I was expecting something that I wasn't going to understand at all, and I really had a great time,' " Graves said.

Graves visits schools to teach students about her art -- an idea that recently was expanded by the Los Angeles Opera Company.

Grand opera has been at the heart of Italian culture for more than four centuries, though some fear its popularity there is on the wane. It's been sung in the United States for more than 200 years.

For the Los Angeles Opera Company, as for Italy's aficionados, the worry is not the past of opera, but its future. That is why the opera went to Ybarra Elementary School in Walnut, Calif., to present a special performance of "The Barber of Seville."

'It Could Be Fun'

For the 60 fifth-graders who made up the chorus and the hundreds more who were in the audience, the production taught them a lot about opera.

"I learned that opera's not always boring," said Kathir Tran. "It could be fun, in a way."

"They don't use microphones," said Robert Edwards. "They have to speak really loud."

"I was just scared," said Alissa Navarro. "I didn't know what they were doing."

Now they do. Geeta Bhatnagar, who performed the part of the heroine, Rosina, could see it in their faces.

"They're engrossed in the show," Bhatnagar said. "If you build upon teaching these children art and different forms of art at a young age, they'll develop a taste for it when they're older. And we hope that we're looking at our future audience."

Boom in United States?

There are definite signs of success. Opera attendance has gone up by almost 50 percent since 1982, which means not only bigger opera audiences in Los Angeles, New York or Washington, but places like Salt Lake City, where Bhatnagar has sung.

"More people see opera now than ever before," insisted Gabriel Manro, who sang the role of the barber Figaro in the school production and sings in the chorus on the main stage. "L.A. Opera does more performances, has a bigger season, sells out more than at any other time in its history and is probably one of the fastest-growing opera companies there is."

Graves hopes young people can be added to the growing fan base, as she once was.

Today recognized as one of America's great operatic divas, Graves said growing up, she was just another kid from a bad, soul-killing, future-killing neighborhood.

"I grew up in Washington, D.C., on the other side of the river, as they say," Graves said. "And I know that were it not for the Duke Ellington School -- this school that I went to, my performing arts high school -- I would not have been exposed to opera. So when I'm personally giving concerts or recitals, I make sure that we work with local schools to get students to come to either rehearsal, or I'll personally buy tickets for them to come."

Bust in Italy?

As opera seems to be growing in the United States, some fear the homegrown audience is growing older and dying off in Italy, the cradle of opera. They say only foreign tourists or business people seem to be taking the Italian audience's place.

"Yes, the audience is getting very much older and the young people are not going to the theater, because there is no musical education that stimulates young people to go and see opera," Sabino Lenoci of L'Opera magazine said through a translator.

"In Italy, their situation is very strange," said Giovanna Soresina, a patron of Milan's famous La Scala opera house, which recently reopened. "We are named all over the world, the country of music, you know, but we don't study music in the schools."

Time and time again, critics said Italy's public schools are letting its musical heritage, particularly its operatic heritage, wither away.

Even at the Milan Conservatory, perhaps Italy's top public school for aspiring musical performers, the signs are everywhere.

"I listen to see if they're doing what I ask them to do, mainly, and that usually really regards basic technique," said Margaret Hayward, a voice teacher at the conservatory. "My main job is to see if they are getting an idea of smoothly moving from one note to another. There is actually very little music education in schools."

Fewer Italians

Less music education in Italian schools means there are just a few Italians among the students in Margaret Hayward's classroom.

"Some come from the provinces," Hayward said. "And we get students from all over the world."

There are so many foreign students winning spots in the Milan Conservatory, the school is changing its rules to cap foreign admissions.

At La Scala, this has meant fewer Italian singers are being developed, which in turn, makes it harder to attract Italian audiences to the opera house.

"We have a crisis of voices," Lenoci said. "We don't have enough. The voices exist, but they don't study opera anymore."

It is a sweet and sour consolation to Italians that while opera seems to be dying in their country, it's growing in America.

As "Figaro's American Adventure" came to its end at Ybarra Elementary School, all could be satisfied knowing the lesson had been clearly absorbed.

Alissa summed it up: "Opera's not just fat people singing with long hair, and stuff like that."

Dave Marash originally reported this story for ABC News' Nightline on Dec. 10, 2004.