The Magic of Opera. Approaches and Strategies for Familiarizing Children With the Operatic Genre

"Over the past decades, an increasing number of opera institutions in various countries have been developing educational programmes aimed at bringing children closer to the opera genre. Although the need for early engagement is recognized, many institutions focus their offerings on adolescents and young people. The educational work of opera houses aimed at children faces greater difficulties than that of orchestras. The need for material resources, work, and energy to put on performances designed specifically for children leads many institutions to offer mainly other types of programmes, such as workshops, guided tours, visits by a singer to schools, creative exploration camps, etc. In terms of repertoire, opera performances offered for children are divided into works composed for children and adaptations for children of famous works from the universal opera repertoire. The present study will examine different approaches and strategies that can contribute to the goal of helping children enter the world of opera. These will be accompanied by examples of programmes presented by several opera houses in Europe, USA, and Canada. We will then present two programmes of our very own design meant for children and offered in Cluj, conceived as a combination of an introduction to the opera genre with excerpts from masterpieces belonging to the opera genre, namely Rossini’s Cenerentola (2014, 2015) at the Romanian National Opera and The Magic Flute (2022) at the Hungarian Opera House. Keywords: children, opera houses, educational programmes "