Florida Grand Opera’s enormously popular series of Family Day events resumes for the 2017—18 season on Sunday, December 10, 2017, with a lively four-hour celebration of the multifaceted art of opera at the Miami Children’s Museum. The event, which runs from 12 noon to 4 p.m., includes an abridged family performance of Engelbert Humperdinck’s classic opera Hansel and Gretel, and is expected to play to a crowd of at least 1,000 South Florida music lovers.
FGO’s Family Day series is designed to foster and enhance a life-long love of learning through opera, and to introduce young people to the enticing possibilities of careers in the arts. “Family Day events strive to ignite children’s interest in opera,” says Rebekah Diaz-Fandrei, Florida Grand Opera’s Director of Education and Community Engagement, “and to help transform that initial interest into a lifelong passion.”
“One of the things I am proudest of during my tenure at FGO,” says Susan T. Danis, the company’s General Director and CEO, “is the number of serious opera lovers that have been created, one step at a time, by our educational programs.”
Highlights of the December 10 Family Day event include:
Stage Make-Up: General principles of theatrical make-up will be demonstrated, with a special focus placed on the characters in Hansel and Gretel.
Prop/Costume Design: The objective of this activity will be to create a highly personal “witch hat.” For the youngest members of the audience, three less taxing activities will be offered: how to create a paper witch hat, a mini-Gingerbread Man stick puppet, and Hansel and Gretel finger puppets.
Learning to Sing: One of the most popular fixtures of FGO’s Family Day is the “Vocal Room”—a twenty-minute group voice lesson and sing along led by teaching artist Dr. Jennifer Tipton, who will give easily mastered vocal warm-ups and teach the audience some of the most memorable Hansel and Gretel tunes.
Get Your Opera Passport: December 10 will see the return of one of FGO’s most popular Family Day components: an Opera Passport/Autograph book, which will be distributed to every Family Day attendee.
Showtime: At 3 pm, an easy-to-follow reduced version of Hansel and Gretel will be presented in the theater space in the 200-seat Auditorium of the Miami Children’s Museum, in English. The performance will last between thirty and forty minutes.
The Miami Children’s Museum is located at 980 MacArthur Causeway, Miami, FL 33132.