How to Get Your Kids Interested in Opera

If you wish to get your children interested in opera, the first question you must ask yourself is, "Why?"

When I was a child, my mother took me to the opera three or four times a year. I hated it. It seemed more of an obligation, a need for me to get "cultured," than anything stemming from an appreciation of the art. We saw Romantic tragedies in foreign languages with plots I could not follow and music whose form I did not understand and, therefore, which I could not appreciate. Aida. Carmen. Madama Butterfly. This, to my child's mind, must be all that opera was: long, drawn-out, needlessly depressing, and mind-numbingly boring.

The only bright spots were when we saw operas by Gilbert and Sullivan. The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Mikado. They were in a language I understood. The plots were fast-moving, with unexpected twists. Most importantly, they were funny. They were a different category altogether, something I thought irreconcilable with the Italian and French dirges I had grown to hate.

It wasn't until I was nineteen and in college that I discovered Mozart. The Magic Flute was the first opera I fell in love with the first time I heard it, instead of having to give it time to grow on me. Surely there must be more of this!

So I found them, comedy after comedy, well-known and more obscure. The Marriage of Figaro. The Barber of Seville. The Secret Marriage. Even Richard Wagner, the god of overlong and drawn-out plots, wrote a comedy, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, whose story and humor drew me in so intensely that I hardly noticed it was five hours long.

I am not suggesting, of course, that you try to get your child interested in opera by presenting them with The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. But what you must do is demonstrate an appreciation for opera yourself, not just as a sign of as well-cultured person but with a good understanding of its form, different genres and time periods, and why, exactly, it is worth listening to a story that, were it a spoken play, would be over in a third of the time.

Read some books about opera. Joseph Kerman's Opera as Drama is an essential work for those already experienced in music history and criticism, but the beginner might want to start with something more like Opera 101 or A Beginner's Guide to Opera. Children are incessantly curious and will ask questions. If you are not interested enough in opera to attempt to understand it, your child will wonder why you find it so important for them to listen - and with good reason!

Begin with comedy; children will be able to pay better attention to a fast-moving, humorous story than one in which it takes twenty minutes for someone to die. English operas - Gilbert and Sullivan in particular - or English translations will be easier for young children, while older children will have more patience for subtitles.

Don't start with recordings; children will be more interested if they can see the characters and follow the plot. Be careful, though; all video recordings are not created equal! Even if there is nothing in the plot that may be inappropriate for children, one can never underestimate the inability of stage directors to stick to something resembling these plots. Read many reviews and make sure you know what you're getting into. There are at least two video recordings of The Magic Flute in English which are good for children: the first is an abridged production performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in 2006 (and repeated live every December, for those who live in and around New York City), with bright and colorful staging by Julie Taymor; the second is a movie directed by Kenneth Branagh which sets the story in a fantasy version of World War I.

Once you have gotten them interested, listen to their feedback. Answer their questions, and ask them what kind of story they might be interested in next. Encourage them to research the subject themselves. And I hope your children will not have to wait until their childhood is over, as I did, to be able to understand and appreciate the marvelous world of opera.