Abbotsbury Music: schools activities

2003

Abbotsbury Music broke new ground by presenting a third performance of the opera Carmen on the playing field of a local primary school, St Mary's, Bridport. Our idea was to show the children, their parents and friends a professional production in a friendly space. Seven local schools were invited to take part in the project. We prepared the children by a series of workshops. The most challenging was helping the children in all seven schools to build parts of a huge Gaudi gate for the playing field which came together on the day. The idea was to make it clear to everyone that something unusual and exciting was happening here, very different from what you might expect on a playing field.

Other artist-led workshops included story telling and flamenco dancing.

We also made a short film, Carmen goes to School, to show how we worked with the children and their teachers, how the performance went off and what everyone thought about it. This film runs for 13 minutes and has been shown around the county to amused - and touched- audiences at village film shows. We think this might be very useful to anyone contemplating a similar venture - DVDs or VCR copies are available at £5 each - please email us.

An important part of the project was teaching more than 60 children to sing the Toreadors' Chorus - which they performed on stage with the professional singers. To get the children ready for this public performance entailed a lot of preparation. Peter Bridges, Music Director of The Garden Opera Company, decided on a suitable chorus, made piano recordings of the voice line and, separately, the accompaniment. We made CD copies of the music and paper copies of the libretto and distributed them to all the schools. We then sent Kathie Prince, a professional voice coach, to each school to give the children and their teachers a first rehearsal as well as some tips on how to exercise the voice. The teachers then continued the rehearsals so that on the day, the children were perfect in word and tune. On the day the seven contingents came together for the first time, had a quick rehearsal with Peter Bridges and then performed impeccably and very sweetly.

2004

we were invited by the Bridport schools to repeat the formula for our production of Don Giovanni. We extended our audience to include the elderly from a number of care homes. The children decorated the fence and gates of the school playing field with 30 cut-out plywood dolls dressed as Don Giovani's girlfriends from many countries. All the dolls' clothes had to be weatherproof and were made entirely of recycled naterials. The children showed great ingenuity in transforming carrier bags into lacey petticoats.

2005

Again by invitation, we revisited the Bridport schools and added a fourth performance. The Head of St Nicholas School, Child Okeford had seen Carmen goes to School and begged us to bring the project to North Dorset. This second matinee had to be moved at the last minute because the weather turned bad and actually took place in the sports hall of Clayesmore School. More than 500 audience packed into the hall and over 100 children sang the chorus.

Cinderella works well with primary school children who know the traditional English fairy story, but to whom the differences in Rossini's version came as an interesting surprise. They explored the differences in drama workshops which we provided, and were encouraged to invent their own interpretations.

Once again Abbotsbury Music provided artist-led workshops in dancing, painting, singing, drumming and mask making. Our people went into 5 schools in West Dorset and 7 in North Dorset.

2006

This time Abbotsbury Music worked with three secondary schools - Budmouth College, Royal Manor College and London City Academy. The opera was Così fan Tutte and as usual the children rehearsed and sang a chorus with the company during a performance. Another change this year was that the matinee took place in Abbotsbury in the lovely gardens of the Abbey House Hotel. The Dorset children went together for a back stage tour of the Royal Opera House in London and also enjoyed the street life in Covent Garden. The London children came down for the day - for some of them it was their first sight of the sea or the Dorset countryside. One boy told us it was `the happiest day of my life'.

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