Opera baby

YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST OPERA!
From 2015, for an audience between 0 and 36 months old.

Music can play a fundamental role in the growth of the very young, contributing to cognitive development, motor skills, and learning. Opera baby is the first step of the Opera Education project to introduce the youngest children to the suggestions and stimuli of the opera world.

The musical concept, designed for an audience of children aged 6 to 36 months, is based on a repertoire title, emphasizing recurring and iconic arias to encourage careful and participatory listening from the youngest audience. The experience promotes sensory experimentation with colors, shapes, materials, and languages designed for a child-friendly stage setup, aiming to create a highly impactful and easily understandable theatrical and musical performance. The performances have a duration of 40 minutes.

The setup is specially designed and developed for the very young audience, allowing freedom in terms of space and time: an initial observation phase followed by an exploration of the space. The show combines singing, movement, and live music with simple, repeated actions that accompany the sounds.

Discover One, Two, Three… Turandot!

Format

Opera baby takes from the desire to widen the platform of Opera Education even more, in order to reach children in preschool age, from the cradle. Recent neuro-cognitive studies have demonstrated that it is an age in which music can play a pivotal role in the child’s growth, motor and learning and cognitive development. The program offers a training for socio-educational workers of the earliest childhood lead by our professional trainers, in which are provided the pedagogical instruments to prepare the children to the theatre experience. Upon request, it possible to organise a special class session in the kindergarten.
If the young spectators cannot be carried to the theatre, the performance could be set up in the common space of kindergarten.

Training

The pedagogical and music course is thought for social educational workers of early childhood only, while parents have access to the booklet with special learning contents and the online didactic area filled with readings, games and suggested listening. In addition, families can take part to the music and game workshop. Instead, exclusively for babies is the workshop activity in the pre-school, in which pedagogics and actors prepare them with different music exercises. Opera baby, by creating a music performance of high artistic quality which is at the same time accessible and participatory, shows itself in line with the other projects of the platform.

Performance

Lasting about 45 minutes, it includes infants’ reception and exploration of space, in a set-up adaptable to theatrical and non-theatrical spaces, such as kindergartens, play-spaces, museums, and multipurpose rooms.
The staging is built for toddlers, in a freedom of space and timing: a first phase of observation and then one of space exploration.
The show combines singing, movement and live music, with simple repeated actions accompanying sounds and an easily assimilated singsong, so much so that at the end the children join in with the singing on stage, making the exploration phase even more active and personal.