[This is a guest post by Katherine Semcesen, who is currently travelling with the Xstrata Ensemble Studio school tour along with school tour manager and composer Dean Burry. Katherine Semcesen is the COC associate director, education and outreach.]

I was thrilled (and so was Dean) to wake up the other morning and see a substantial article covering our outreach initiatives gracing the front cover of the Entertainment section of the Sudbury Star.

In four days, Dean and I have visited 12 schools and have delivered 22 workshops reaching a total of 1,320 children in the Sudbury region. It's hard work delivering workshops and they require loads of energy from Dean and me, as each school deserves to get the same high quality experience regardless if it's our first, fifth, or 20th workshop. And there's nothing like getting re-energized with every group we meet!

So what goes into an introduction to opera workshop? After I introduce myself and inform the group that I'm there to give them an opera experience, I often see a lot of puzzled faces and students not really understanding how they are going to "do opera." For my workshops I always begin with the question: "what do you think of when I say the word: 'opera'?" The whole point of this question is to extract whatever preconceived notions or previous knowledge the students have of the art, but also to set up an environment of exploration that encourages communication and eliminates the pressure of having to give "right" or "wrong" answers. It's a great way to establish an even playing ground amongst a diverse group of students. Many students put up their hands to share what they think they know about opera. Most of the students I've had the pleasure of meeting this week have never really listened to operas or experienced a live or recorded performance. With only some guidance from me, they were able to come up with a definition for opera. As one child put it: "So it's basically a story with music." Exactly!

From here I teach the students how to conduct a simple pattern and about how opera singers breathe, how to feel their "built in microphones" (their resonances), and teach them an excerpt from Isis and the Seven Scorpions. There's a part in the opera when the audience is invited to join in and sing the phrase: "I take away your sting." Why not teach it to the students ahead of time? I have a surprise for the cast though: because opera is about acting and moving to music in addition to singing, I encouraged each group that I worked with to come up with an gesture to "activate" their phrase. Each school group came up with a different movement. I'm looking forward to seeing if they are brave enough to do the movement when they see the performance next week!

My workshop continues with a physical exploration of the story. The students have really taken to the ancient myth of Isis. Depending on class dynamics, I get them to create poses for the various characters in the opera individually or in a group. Hands down, their favourite has been the transformation into a scorpion. This exercise encourages the students to use their creativity to express emotions and characteristics of the characters in the opera with their bodies. This activity builds non-verbal communication skills in a fun way!

We end the hour with a question and answer period and I never feel like I have enough time to get to all of the questions. I'd like to say that every child walks out of the workshop in love with opera, but it's not always the case. If we've planted a seed that grows an individual's interest or appreciation of the arts, or effectively communicated the value of the arts, then we've done our job. My favourite responses have included students coming out of a workshop and thanking their principal for school and a boy today thanking me for picking him to demonstrate how to act like Osiris because "older people think I just act silly. Today I felt more important." And that makes it all worth it.