The Lesson Of ‘War Requiem’: Don’t Underestimate Younger Audiences

by Christine Brewer (Ed note: this is THE Christine Brewer,
opera luminary)

I work with a group of sixth graders in the little school where
I used to teach in Marissa, Ill., about 60 miles southeast of St.
Louis: a coal-mining town where the mines are now shuttered. The
project, called “Opera-tunities,” started out as a sort of
geography lesson. The classroom teacher, Nancy Wagner, would
pinpoint on a world map where I was performing. It was a sort of
“Where in the World is Mrs. Brewer?” map. I asked her if I could
drop in on the kids once in a while, and the project began to
grow.

Now I visit the classes a few times a year and I bring my
friends from the St. Louis Symphony to play. We talk about our
lives as musicians and talk about music. David Robertson, the music
director of the St. Louis Symphony, started inviting the class to
attend closed rehearsals of whatever I was singing with the SLSO.
To prepare the students for the music — ranging from Mozart’s
Requiem to the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten to Beethoven’s opera
Fidelio and even Wagner’s Die Walküre — Nancy would play CDs of
recordings of the upcoming works, and I would spend time with the
kids talking about the words I had to sing.

One of my favorite “Opera-tunities” experiences came when we
were studying the War Requiem. I thought perhaps Britten’s piece
might be a bit of a stretch for 12-year-olds, but was I ever wrong.
Weeks before the rehearsals, I got e-mails from students with
questions about the text. They had to look up words they didn’t
understand, and wanted to know what I thought.