The myth of Orpheus is intricately implicated in the origin of song. For centuries, myth and music have cooperated in a variety of genres, foremost among them in opera. The myth, open to reinterpretation across linguistic, national, and temporal boundaries, served as a starting point for an extracurricular opera project in the metropolitan region…

The Life Drama project is a drama-based sexual health promotion project, developed by a cross-cultural research team in Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the past four years. Recognising the limitations of established theatre-in-education and theatre-for-development approaches when working across cultures, the research team explored ways of tapping into…

In this article, the author explores the richly layered double text of Kushner and Sendak's picturebook, "Brundibar" (2003)--the historical context of "Brundibar" as a Holocaust-era children's operetta by Hans Krasa and Adolf Hoffmeister, and the present day manifestation of "Brundibar" as a children's picturebook. In…

This article describes a music programme in an Australian early learning centre. Through a repertoire of songs, games and instruments, the children were introduced to music forms, including opera. Mozart's Magic Flute was presented to these children by watching the Metropolitan Opera's latest film performance. Because this opera seized the…

The Opera eLearning project developed a solution for opera singing distance lessons at the graduate level, using high bandwidth to deliver a quality audio and video experience that has been evaluated by singing teachers, chorus and orchestra directors, singers and other professional musicians. Prior to finding a technological model that suits the…

Team teaching--two or more teachers sharing the training of a group of students--has only recently been implemented in the curricula of many higher music education institutions. This article reports on a survey of 142 music students and their tutors from three departments (the Schools of Strings, Vocal and Opera Studies, and Wind, Brass and…

This study aims to examine how and why students transform in terms of learning motivation in learning the Cantonese opera with a teacher-artist partnership approach in Hong Kong schools. An artist and seven teachers from four schools collaborated to teach the genre for eight weeks. Students' learning motivation changes in Cantonese opera was…

In the context of debates on place, space, and identity in a period of globalisation, this article asks whether collaborative arts projects are a means to identity formation for participants. This is of interest, not least, because such projects are outside consumption, the latter more often discussed in work on identity in sociology. Situated…

This paper reports two projects done by children in Hong Kong, adapting the Reggio experience to fit the local needs of the community and the children. As Carla Rinaldi said, children are constantly "in search of meaning, finding the sense and meaning of things we do" (Lee, 2001, p. 29). The first project documented how children of the…

This performance guide is designed for teachers to use with students before and after a performance of "Angels Voices," with libretto by Gary Race and music by Noa Ain. The guide, called a "Cuesheet," is in the form of a Director's Notebook (a scrapbook/journal of clippings, quotations, illustrations, notes, and other items) to…

The world of classical music, says the writer, has always been international, and has now become truly global. Opera is perhaps traditionally, and most conspicuously, global. At any performance of the Metropolitan Opera of New York, for example, one encounters several different nationalities on stage, back stage, and in the orchestra pit. But the…

This article reports on a five-year Australian study where pre-service primary and secondary teachers were encouraged to enhance their creativity through the development of ethnographic operatic performances. The creativity focus of this project was the important aspect of risk-taking and daring. The methodological basis for the study is…

During the course of this pilot project, two models for environmental interactive radio instruction (IRI) were developed. The first model used a traditional IRI storyline where the setting of the radio show and the interaction over the air simulates a classroom environment. Teachers and students experimented with environmental information through…

Investigates the effects of India's first long-running television soap opera that was designed to promote women's status in Indian society. Finds that exposure to the program was positively associated with viewers' involvement with the characters in the program and with viewer's television dependency, but did not make viewers more aware of women's…

Offers examples of dramatic experiences (student produced soap operas) in two classrooms in British comprehensive secondary schools. Concludes that students in other countries would find such experiences as meaningful and enjoyable as their British counterparts. Notes that the two teachers managed to be flexible, appropriating effective…