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Opera Magic
by E. Mendelsohn
Last week, Class 3 taught the Chapin community to believe in magic. Students in Class 3 wrote, performed and produced Alakazam: She's Gone!, an original opera about a young girl learning to believe in the extraordinary and to believe in herself. A group of skeptical children visit a retiring magician’s last act. The magician makes one of the young girls disappear and her friends venture to a mermaid cave and then to the middle of a dark wood to rescue her.
Assisted by their teachers, the girls learned about business, marketing, crafts, story telling, music, taking initiative and working together by staging a 40 minute opera. Class 3 divided into groups which tackled different aspects of the production. They became composers, writers, makeup artists, costume and set designers, public relations officers, stage and production managers, historians, electricians, carpenters and performers.
The various groups met as a company every Tuesday throughout the spring to give progress reports and to enlist the help of their classmates in gathering materials and ideas. This hard work paid off as they performed the opera to Chapin Lower School, Middle School, faculty and parents. The event was truly magical.
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