Opera Omaha’s Education programs consist of a wide variety of programs designed for students from upper elementary school through college. The programs include classroom visits with artists, interactive multi-media performances, performances that feature student performers, and free admission to rehearsals and performances.

Working closely with composers, educators, professional musicians, and other artists, students learned how operas are created, experienced the thrill of the operatic voice both up close and in the context of staged productions, and explored the history of how and why operas were created and the reasons they are still performed today.

Education programs include:

• Classroom Presentations
• Choral Collaborative
• Student Dress Rehearsal Night
• War Horse 101
• Young Ambassador

For more information on our Education programs, please contact Tara Cowherd, Community Programs Coordinator at tcowherd@operaomaha.org.

CLASSROOM PRESENTATIONS

During the world premiere production of Wakonda’s Dream, Opera Omaha made available to Omaha and Lincoln area schools the senior creative team for classroom visits, lectures and presentations.  The team featured renowned director and creative consultant Rhoda Levine, Guggenheim Fellow and Grammy-nominated composer Anthony Davis, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, assistant director and professional pow-wow dancer of the American Indian Dance Theater Dallin Maybee, and Opera Omaha’s artistic director and principal conductor Stewart Robertson.  Following classroom visits, students were given the opportunity to see the world premiere production at no charge.

Beginning with the 2006-2007 season, Opera Omaha initiated Reality Opera, a collaborative partnership designed to enhance the educational opportunities and the community at South High School, Omaha’s visual and performing arts magnet high school, and to encourage a broader enrollment from the city’s majority population. South High is located in the city’s most culturally diverse neighborhood. The student base is largely African- Sudanese- and Latino-American. The goals of Reality Opera are to help Omaha South High School become one of the best performing arts magnet schools in America; to enrich the impact of our educational efforts with students on an arts career path and who will soon be adult cultural consumers; and to encourage students who are not on an arts career path to become life-long learners incorporating the arts, in general, and opera, in particular, into their life experience.

CHORAL COLLABORATIVE

Opera Omaha joins the Omaha Symphony in a collaborative venture with seven area high school choirs, members of the Opera Omaha Chorus, guest soloists of Opera Omaha, and the musicians of the Omaha Symphony. Opera Omaha Resident Music Director, J Gawf, and guest soloists accompany Omaha Symphony’s Resident Conductor, Ernest Richardson, for two weeks of individual and combined choir rehearsals. Students are also taught the fundamentals of good vocal technique and discuss careers in the arts. The collaboration concludes with a final performance at the Holland Performing Arts Center where students experience an unparalleled live performance of a large symphonic choral work.

STUDENT DRESS REHEARSAL NIGHT

As a follow-up to participation in Opera Omaha community programs, students are invited to a dress rehearsal of a main stage production. When appropriate, the experience includes other technical or artistic demonstrations, such as stage combat or vocal warm-ups. This season, students of all ages attended the final rehearsals for Tosca, Wakonda’s Dream and The Barber of Seville.

WAR HORSE 101

War Horse 101 is an engaging, interactive multi-media performance that features 2 operatic singers, led at the piano by Opera Omaha’s resident music director. 300 years of opera history comes to life, up close and personal, showcasing such popular composers as Rossini, Verdi and Puccini. Designed for high school and college students, the performance places special emphasis on the Italian repertoire, the “war horses” of opera, featuring music as the true language of opera.

Beautiful music, powerful voices, drama, humor, passion, and murder – all the things we know and love about opera, not to mention 300 years of history, in one thrilling 45-minute presentation.

YOUNG AMBASSADORS

Opera Omaha invites area high school and college students to serve as Audience Service Volunteers for performances at the Orpheum Theater. In exchange, students have the opportunity to watch the performance for free and to get a behind the scenes look at opera.