A select group of visual art students from Lincoln High School under the instruction of visual arts educator Ed Moller has been working on a real-world art project. In a partnership with San Diego Opera, students are creating artwork for San Diego Opera's Gala in June 2022 - and beyond.

The artworks are centered around the operas that will be performed during SDO's 2022-2023 season. There are three operas by Romantic-era Italian composer Giacomo Puccini - Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, and Tosca - as well as the new Spanish-language opera El último sueño de Frida y Diego (The Last Dream of Frida and Diego) by Gabriela Lena Frank, a living American composer. The production of El último sueño de Frida y Diego will have its world premiere at the San Diego Opera in October 2022.

"This project opened up a direct channel of communication between San Diego Opera's General Director David Bennett and students at Lincoln High," says John Gabriel, San Diego Opera's Education Director. "David described San Diego Opera’s needs, and students responded with their own inquiries and did their own research with the help of their beloved teacher, Mr. Moller."

As preparation for their creative project, students researched the relationship between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and analyzed the complex themes of each opera, including rape, gender fluidity, and giving a child up for adoption. Perspectives on these complicated ideas were then expressed in their individual pieces. "Students had the opportunity to work with subject matter from the operas that they would not necessarily be exposed to in a traditional high school art class," says Lincoln High visual art teacher Ed Moller.

San Diego Opera is no newcomer to education in San Diego Unified; they regularly connect with schools for residencies and projects. For students, partnerships with arts organizations open up a whole new world, revealing prospective career paths and authentic performance tasks in the creative economy. "This has been an amazing opportunity for students to see how the process of creation to publication takes place,” says Mr. Moller.

After much time spent at lunch and after-school, this small group of students also gets to experience an incredible outcome: Mr. Gabriel notes that the students' artwork is "all over SDO - on invitations, postcards, and digital media." Artwork by the Lincoln High School students will be displayed on the invitation to San Diego Opera's Gala 2022, at the Opera Gala event, and may be selected for marketing and promotional materials for the 2022-2023 season.