Supported by Opera for Educators, a year-long series providing educators with professional enrichment and strategies for incorporating opera into the classroom curriculum, these programs are founded on the principles of active participation and creative learning. As part of the Elementary In-School Opera Program, Los Angeles Opera professionals work with students in a series of workshops, teaching them the fundamentals of music, singing, acting, and design. Based on the book of the same name by David Saltzman, who died in 1990 after a battle with Hodgkin's disease, the story follows the quest of a jester who awakens one morning to find his laughter missing. The opera will be performed by the students, with professional opera singers, at an all-school assembly. Over the course of eight weeks, middle and high school students work with operatic artists on a fully professional production, learning about music, staging, and costumes.
Students also explore the social and dramatic undercurrents that make opera meaningful.
The goal of the In-School Opera Program is to reach every Orange County public school at least once every two years, as well as to increase tours to Seminole, Osceola, and Volusia county schools. Robert Rodriguez's Monkey See, Monkey Do, which is sung in English and Spanish, will be toured in central Florida, which has a growing Hispanic population. Orlando Opera will develop study guides tailoring the presentations to the schools' curriculums, and will conduct in-service workshops to acquaint teachers with various interactive techniques for involving students in the interpretive process. Orlando Opera artists will also spend a week in residency at schools with a high percentage of at-risk students. Students will have the opportunity to interview the singers, and to watch them rehearse as preparation for attending mainstage performances at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre.