Students Dress Rehearsal
Grades 7-12
The Student Dress Rehearsal Program introduces middle and high school students to opera by giving them the opportunity to attend the final dress rehearsals of Washington National Opera's main stage productions. Held at the grand Kennedy Center Opera House, the dress rehearsal is a full-length performance of the opera, with occasional pauses for technical or musical corrections. Students experience opera in a performance setting, and receive materials to help them understand and better appreciate the many dimensions of the art form. Prior to the performance, classes receive student and teacher study guides designed to help classes prepare for the opera by drawing connections to modern day life and past historical events. Each participating class also receives an excerpt CD with various songs from the opera. In the 2011-12 season, WNO invites students and their teachers to experience Mozart's comic Così fan tutte and Verdi's powerful Nabucco.
Così fan tutte, by Mozart
Sung in Italian with English supertitles
Take two silly sisters, mix in brash lovers, add a pinch of cynical philosopher and a dash of scheming maid, and you have the perfect recipe for a night of madcap opera. In Mozart's game of love and seduction, two young men wager that their fiancées will remain faithful, even when tempted. To prove it, they decide to do the tempting themselves. They pretend to go off to war and return in disguise, each intent on wooing the other's lady.
Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 7:00 PM
Location: The Kennedy Center Opera House
Fee: $15 per student, teacher, and/or chaperone
Registration: The Kennedy Center School Brochure or call 202.416.8835
Nabucco, by Verdi
Sung in Italian with English supertitles
Verdi's powerful blockbuster about the defeat, enslavement, and exile of the ancient Babylonian Jews by King Nabucco is filled with grand and gorgeous music, including the famous slave chorus "Va pensiero." Witness the epic struggle of a royal family at odds with their nation and each other, battling for power among the lost wonders of the world in this rarely performed work. This opera is the perfect tie-in for classes studying ancient world history!
Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 7:00 PM
Location: The Kennedy Center Opera House
Fee: $15 per student, teacher, and/or chaperone
Registration: The Kennedy Center School Brochure or call 202.416.8835
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is an educational opportunity exclusively for students and their teachers. Only two chaperones per ten students are permitted. All students must be in grades 7-12.
David and Alice Rubenstein
are the Presenting Underwriters of WNO.
The
Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist
Program is made possible through the generous support of
The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.
The Music of Budapest, Prague, and Vienna
Presenting Underwriter HRH Foundation
Additional support is provided by
Noémi and Michael Neidorff and the Centene Charitable Foundation,
The Honorable Nancy G. Brinker, and State Plaza Hotel.
Generous support for WNO Italian opera is provided by Daniel and Gayle D'Aniello.
Additional support for Nabucco
is provided by The Dallas Morse Coors Foundation for the Performing Arts
and by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
International Programming at the Kennedy Center is made possible through the generosity of the
Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts.
