My Teenage Son Likes Opera

Last fall, I received an email about some dress rehearsal performances coming up at the Detroit Opera House. We were offered the opportunity to get tickets for these performances for $10 each. I asked my kids about them and my then-17-year-old son said he was interested in attending some of the operas.

"Really?" I questioned. "You want to go to the opera?"

He reiterated his interest and so I ordered tickets for just him and me to the first opera, which happened to be The Barber of Seville (Rossini). (You're probably imagining THIS scene from Bugs Bunny now, aren't you?)



We LOVED The Barber of Seville. Since it is a comic opera, we found much humor and laughed a great deal. The music was wonderful and we were much impressed by the sets. If you are wondering about our comprehension, yes, the music is sung in Italian, but there are English subtitles above the stage so we could understand the storyline. We had great seats on the main floor that I later realized would cost over $100 each in a regular performance.

I asked David if he wanted me to order tickets for any of the remaining shows, which had to be ordered in the fall for the rest of the year. We chose Fidelio (Beethoven) and Aida (Verdi) and then settled into the rest of his senior year.

Now, lest you imagine David as a musician or a classical music snob, I do need to tell you that he loves many kinds of music. (Just about everything except country or hipster music, he will tell you.) He likes my 80's rock, his dad's hard rock, dub-step (which I cannot define, so please google), and so many other kinds of music (even some that I don't really approve of). So, opera is just one more genre he appreciates, but not the ONLY thing he likes.

In April, the tickets arrived for Fidelio and we once again headed to Detroit. (I even let him drive!) The music of Fidelio is amazing; we both enjoy Beethoven. Since these are dress rehearsal performances, the audience is warned that the performance may stop if necessary. During the Fidelio performance, the conductor did stop the orchestra in several places to rehearse. The plotline was not as interesting to me; I found it rather predictable, but we enjoyed the staging of the play as well as the amazing performances.

So, when our tickets arrived for Aida, we were excited. Even though this performance is just days before David's graduation and we have MUCH to accomplish, we took the time to drive once more to Detroit and spend the day enjoying opera. SO glad we did. What a wonderful time we spent together. The sets were just  WONDERFUL. David, as a potential mechanical engineer, can appreciate the set design more than many observers. Since the opera is set in Ancient Egypt, one of my favorite eras, I enjoyed that very much. The portions of the show with all the cast onstage were spectacular and breathtaking.

I look forward to discovering more great operas next year and I will likely drag my other three children along. Hopefully, David will be able to continue to enjoy opera as he moves into his adult life.

Free Worship CD Download (Acquire the Fire)

If you'd like a free contemporary Christian worship CD, visit Acquire the Fire's website and click the "Free ATF Worship CD Download" button on the left. My son has the opportunity to attend this event this weekend.

Free MP3's!

Download some free MP3 files at Amazon.com.

There are over 500 free MP3's there. Something for everyone, I am certain and maybe you'll find something new to like!

I got "Night Enchanted" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and some classical music.

Go check it out!

Classical Kids

Long ago I was a schoolteacher. A multigrade classroom in a Christian school was my work environment for five years. I worked at a teacher supply store for a couple years during that time and spent just about all of my salary on teacher supplies.

One thing I bought back then was Classical Kids audio cassettes. Hopefully you've heard of these, but if you haven't, I do highly recommend them. Fascinating stories featuring music by famous composers familiarize the listeners with either lives of the composers or, as in the case of Mozart's Magic Flute, the plot of the opera.

The four cassettes I have are:
Mr. Bach Comes to Call: The great composer tells his story to a little girl
Mozart's Magic Fantasy: A journey through The Magic Flute
Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery: A tale of Venice and violins
Beethoven Lives Upstairs: A tale of genius and childhood


I dug these out and introduced them to my children last week, and these cassettes have been the only thing we have listened to in the car since! They particularly like the Vivaldi and Mozart selections. The stories are professionally recorded and the acting is beautifully done. Excerpts from the composer's most famous works are included, sometimes as background to the story and sometimes as short snippets just for listening pleasure, but always integrated with the plot.

There are several more Classical Kids selections that I do not yet own, but they are on my wish list! These are the titles I am hoping to get eventually:
Classical Kids Christmas: A telling of the Christmas story children's choirs singing your favorite carols
Hallelujah Handel!: Angels in the opera house
Mozart's Magnificent Voyage: A symphony of stories for all ages
Song of the Unicorn: A Classical Kids story with medieval music
Tchaikovsky Discovers America: A tale of courage and adventure
Daydreams and Lullabies: a celebration of poetry, song and classical music.

One note of caution. If yours is a family that avoids any mention of magic or spookiness, you will probably want to skip Mozart's Magic Fantasy and Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery. There is a lot of magic in the Mozart story and some slight spookiness in the Vivaldi story. I don't think it would offend most people, but amongst Christian homeschoolers, I do believe there are some who would find it unacceptable. I didn't use those two in my Christian school classroom because I felt that some parents could possibly have objections. However, I think that many families will find these stories both enchanting and enriching. You likely would have no objection to the stories about Bach and Beethoven. We personally have learned a lot and had our hearts touched by all of these stories.

As Beethoven believed (and we learned in the Beethoven Lives Upstairs story), "Music can change the world."

Hymns

I have decided that we will sing hymns! Yes. We will learn a hymn every month for the next year. I think it is terribly sad that such beautiful hymns are becoming obsolete.

I started talking about hymns with David and he told me that Fanny Crosby wrote 8000 hymns. "That can't be right," says I. He says, "But I heard it on Adventures in Odyssey, Mom!"

Well. Then it must be right! LOL So, he brought me the cassette and PLAYED it for me. Yep! He was right. It says that Fanny Crosby wrote 8000 hymns. AND he knew her married name, which I had never heard! Then he told me lots more about her.

I love Adventures in Odyssey!!

So, anyway. I have an audio cassette from Cedarmont Kids called, amazingly enough, "Hymns". Most of the hymns I have chosen, although not all, are on that cassette. I figure I can find the others somewhere around here. I am really looking forward to this and the kids already know some hymns because of the Adventures in Odyssey story. (In case you want to look for that, it's called "Hymn Writers" and it was copyrighted in 1993.)

So here's my list of 12 hymns for the next year. We will learn the entire hymn and learn a little about the hymn writer, if possible.

July - To God Be The Glory
August - This is My Father's World
September - A Mighty Fortress is Our God
October - Bringing in the Sheaves
November - The Doxology
December - Angels from the Realms of Glory
January - Amazing Grace
February - Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee
March - Rescue the Perishing (I don't know this one, but David REALLY wanted it. It's on the Odyssey tape. Natch.)
April - Christ the Lord is Risen Today
May - Standing on the Promises
June - What a Friend We Have in Jesus

If you know of any great resources for learning hymns, please let me know about them. I do have an old hymnbook and a One Year Book of Hymns that has a hymn and a short devotional for each day (365! yes!).

Btw, I was raised in a church that sang mostly praise choruses, so I don't know where my love for hymns came from. I do have a couple of hymn cassettes by Second Chapter of Acts that I just ADORE, though.