It was the class teacher's idea to do Carmen. Newly qualified and with a music degree, she was full of enthusiasm for the Create and Sing resources produced for schools by the Royal Opera House (ROH). I was all set to go with India as the Year 4 class' term topic and had been planning to utilise the useful online material from the Ali Akbar College of Music, which I can also recommend. But this is primary school, where changes of plan are a feature of life and a visiting music specialist does their best to take each swerve as it comes, with cheerful pragmatism. Besides, I'd been aware of the ROH resources but not had a chance to explore them, so this was the nudge I needed.
‘It's all planned out on their website, apparently – shouldn't involve extra work,’ reassured the deputy head, kindly. So off I went to investigate. Navigating around the ROH site was confusing at first. There is a lot of interesting stuff but I needed to compile a set that would fit our timetable of five sessions plus a performance as quickly as possible. To avoid making the mistakes I made, you should start by reading the About section, which clearly states: ‘Our educational resources are constructed in a way that allows the teacher to Taste, Explore or Immerse into our world. All our resources come from atoms which can be brought together in different combinations.’
Following the links for Carmen, I discovered some resources appearing (helpfully) in more than one location – note that if you opt to take the shorter ‘Explorer’ set, rather than the full ‘Immersion’ programme, you will meet references to things you won't have seen.
The introductory videos are lively bitesize pieces that introduce the story and explain ‘what is opera’, in upbeat, sometimes comic-book, terms. But watch out. Carmen was not written for young innocents. In its first run, Parisian audiences were shocked by the opera's depiction of sensual seduction. Indeed, the storyline raises several of today's hot topics: smoking, sexuality, animal cruelty, knifing, and so on. To paraphrase Ed Gardner, opera is when someone gets stabbed and instead of bleeding they sing! ROH Education handles this carefully, but less child-appropriate scenes from other productions are found online. In this case, I suggested we provide direct links to the suitable ROH videos, rather than pointing the students to the website.
Getting stuck in
ROH offered fantastic inspiration and encouragement, writing: ‘go with what works best for your group’. It was, for us, most definitely a case of having to be adaptable. Ups and teaching songs are mostly straightforward and helpful, some harder to interpret. Perhaps with more time we could have explored the idea of ‘breathing in’ the emotion and vocal quality. More at our level was the ‘Twinkle’ exercise, singing a well-known song in a manner that conveys an emotion. That was challenging enough for us and allowed plenty of scope for the more dramatically inclined.
Youngsters are usually not short of ideas when it comes to putting actions to a song. For the ‘Children's Chorus’, we referred to the ROH notes but simply went ahead and made our own version, arriving at something very similar without any issues.
In ‘Market square devising’ we followed the method recommended for building a scene and had a really productive session in which groups invented their characters and created movement sequences, developing them into a tableaux. This had to be done in the classroom, around furniture, because the hall wasn't available. It took some time to view everyone's work, most of which was highly imaginative and entertaining. Some participants confounded my little preamble on the suggestive power of mime by acting as the dog that was walked, or the horse that was ridden – more literal than I'd envisaged, but it was their show!
We'd prepared our building blocks for that opening scene and needed space in which to assemble it. We also had to find a special and important job that would interest and occupy the dissenting lad who was kicking about on the edges of the group, causing distraction.
These requirements were flagged-up between visits but thanks to pressures of one sort or another remained unresolved by the time of our next session. It's quite typical of the primary schools I visit – space is at a premium and you often have to compromise. Staff are positive and helpful as possible, but generally overstretched – you simply do the best you can in the circumstances.
This time, the hall was occupied by visiting sports coaches, so our opera rehearsal took place outside. This seems the wrong way round to me, but there you go – at least it didn't rain! The class teacher had to be called away to deal with some urgent matter, so it was left to me to block-out the market scene. A teaching assistant did her best to record what we thought was needed, while also attending to the behaviour of the earlier mentioned dissenter. Thanks to the prevailing positivity and enthusiasm of the majority of the children, we got through it, but not without some moments of great frustration and irritability – not just from me! I guess that's all in a day's work for real opera directors.
Fine tuning
Where this particular group of eight-to nine-year-olds shone most brightly was in their singing. Their dramatic inventions for the market square showed they could create moves and build a scene together, but when it came to learning the songs and refining their vocal performance, I have to say they were brilliant. Thank goodness! I must have worked with dozens of Year 4 groups over the last decade or so, and it's truly fortunate that this project was undertaken with a class most of whom enjoy singing and listen and respond to ideas.
At the outset I had planned to start learning the ‘Children's Chorus’ first and then the ‘Toreador song’, thinking that the ‘Habanera’, chromatic and polyphonic, would present the greatest challenge and might have to be simplified. Guidance from the ROH suggests splitting Carmen's phrases between groups. But as soon as this bunch had heard the tune and learned the words, they wouldn't stop singing the whole thing! Dividing those gorgeous lines just didn't feel right – instinctively they made that decision themselves and all I could do was smile.
The ROH audio resources are great but had to be edited to fit our sequence. I made a loop of the ‘Habanera’ rhythm as an underlay for the narrators and we marked the end of each section with a castanet signal that cued a ‘stamp-stamp clap clap’ from everyone. This percussive flamenco move served as punctuation throughout.
This is just one of the available online resources
We didn't appoint soloists but assigned character types instead, on a non-exclusive basis, so that everyone could sing and imagine themselves a principal or supporting character – transforming from one to another at will as the action unfolded.
Eventually, after some scheduling disappointments, we were able to show the work in assembly. ‘Follow that, then!’ grumbled, with good humour, the Year 6 teacher, whose turn was next. I hurried away to the school I was supposed to be attending that morning, trailing castanets and speaker leads, plus a thank-you card and chocs, which my wife tells me were delicious. I was glowing with pride at what my students had managed to achieve – I heartily recommend trying it yourself.
To check out the ROH resources, visit tinyurl.com/mt8-Carmen.
