"Bullies Never Win" Mini-Opera

In 2014, some of my colleagues and I participated in the San Francisco Opera ARIA Network program. Our classes received weekly visits from a teaching artist who introduced the students to the art of opera. After learning about opera, the teaching artist worked with the students to create a class mini-opera. Our class chose to make our opera based on the book, Bullies Never Win by Margery Cuyler. For around 15 weeks, the students worked with me and the teaching artist on creating the lyrics and composing the music for our three arias (songs). We also came up with the dialogue that goes between the songs.

As an educator in the program, I was required to attend some professional development workshops held by the SF Opera. Some of the workshops included vocal exercises, writing librettos, staging, costume design, and more. The students were also treated with some guest visits from a costume shopper from the SF Opera, Adler Fellows (opera singers in training), and a Production Artist who helped us with our sets and props design.

Not only did the students write their class opera, they also created the entire set and all the props for it too (with some adult assistance from the production artist and parent volunteers, of course).

After weeks of creating, our opera was finally finished and the rehearsing began. Students were assigned roles (lead roles were decided through auditions) and everyone worked hard and practiced their parts. After three dress rehearsal sessions, the students performed their production to the parents.

Participating in this program was a very rewarding experience for both me and the students. The class was very excited and proud of their work because they were able to take full ownership of the entire opera. It was a lot of additional work beyond our core curriculum, but I plan to participate in this program again next year and would definitely hope to bring the program with me to whatever school I may end up at in the future.

Please email me for a link to the recording of our mini-opera (not shared publicly due to student privacy). The libretto (script) is below for your viewing.