Opera Performs For Students In Cafeteria

Tulsa Performers Invite Several Promising Young Professional Artists To Participate In Program

Zac Engle, left, and Alex Elliott, both with the Tulsa Opera, play Mooch and Father during Marcus DeLoach’s “Mooch the Messy” on Monday at Westwood Elementary School in Springdale. The Opera is taking the performance, about a messy rat’s visit from his father, on a tour through select schools in Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas.
Zac Engle, left, and Alex Elliott, both with the Tulsa Opera, play Mooch and Father during Marcus DeLoach’s “Mooch the Messy” on Monday at Westwood Elementary School in Springdale. The Opera is taking the performance, about a messy rat’s visit from his father, on a tour through select schools in Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas.

— Students at Shaw Elementary impressed Cynthia Voss as they watched live opera in their school’s cafeteria.

“You could have heard a pin drop,” said Voss, the school’s principal, who made a cameo appearance in the show. “I was really proud of them.”

The students, more than 500 of them, sat enraptured during the entire performance of “Mooch the Messy,” a children’s story about a mouse named Mooch whose untidy ways create conflict between him and his father. The opera was in English.

The Monday morning show was the first of a four-week school tour by the Tulsa Opera, featuring tenor Zac Engle in the role of Mooch and baritone Alexander Elliott in the role of the father. Pianist Whitney Hollis provided accompaniment. The troupe will travel to schools in the region within about a two-hour drive of Tulsa, Okla.

The two actors addressed the audience when the 30-minute show ended.

“Did you guys like that?” Engle asked.

“Yeah!” the students shouted back.

“Was that the first time you’ve been to an opera?”

“Yeah!”

Engle and Elliott then took a few questions. One student asked how they make their voices so high and loud.

“Lots and lots of practice,” Elliott said. “It’s like when you play sports. You do it over and over again.”

Another student commented on how angry Elliott appeared at one point in the opera.

“Thankfully, I was just acting,” Elliott said. “I wasn’t really angry.”

Kaci Berry, Shaw’s music instructor, went over terms like “aria” and “duet” with a group of second-graders after the students had returned to their classrooms. They also discussed how the piano player affected the performance and enhanced the students’ understanding of the action on stage.

Second-grader Kenda Burkett noted there were times during the show when the actors were “kind of just talking.”

“It’s called recitative,” Berry said, explaining the opera term for when a singer chants the words in a way that resembles regular speech.

The Tulsa Opera invites several promising young professional artists each season to participate in its Studio Artist Program. They serve as primary artists for all Tulsa Opera education and outreach programs.

Engle, 27, and Elliott, 26, said they both hated opera until they reached college. As with any other kind of music, Engle said, you have to be exposed to it before you can learn to like it.

“Opera is for everyone,” said Hollis, the troupe’s pianist.

The troupe gave an afternoon performance at Westwood Elementary.

At A Glance

Tulsa Opera

Tulsa Opera began as the Tulsa Opera Club in 1948. It is the 18th-oldest opera company in North America. It presents three grand opera productions each season at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

Source: TulsaOpera.com

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