In the dark auditorium of Rome’s Teatro Costanzi, a shrill lament floated from the upper galleries. Dozens of flashlights came on, their beams crisscrossing wildly, searching for the source of the sound.
The rays of light were directed towards a spectral figure – a thin, black-haired woman, dressed in white, moving in a funeral rhythm and singing plaintively. In the audience, some 130 children, aged 8 to 10, let out screams, gasps and a “this isn’t real”. Several shouted “Emma, Emma”.
The children had just learned that the Costanzi, the capital’s opera house, had a resident ghost. No, not this one. It was said to be the spirit of Emma Carelli, an Italian soprano who ran the theater a century ago and who loved it so much she was loath to leave it, even in death.
“The theater is a place where strange things happen, where the impossible becomes possible,” Francesco Giambrone, general director of the Costanzi, told the children Saturday afternoon, as they arrived to participate in a sleepover to get to know the theater. .
Music education is not a priority in Italy, the country that invented opera and gave the world some of its greatest composers. Many experts, including Mr. Giambrone, say their country has rested on its considerable laurels rather than cultivating a musical culture that encourages students to learn about their illustrious heritage.
With little support from schools or lawmakers, arts organizations like the Costanzis concluded it was up to them to reach out to young people.
Mr. Giambrone sought to dispel opera’s stuffy image by abandoning the genre’s strict dress code. This change, like the sleepover, is part of his efforts to make opera, often considered an elitist, intellectual and abstruse art form for those in the know, more familiar and accessible, especially to children.
“We believe that theater should be for everyone and that it should make people feel at home,” Mr. Giambrone said in an interview. Hence the decision to welcome young people to eat, sleep and play there. “Once a theater is a home, it’s no longer something distant, something a little austere to fear, or a place where you feel inadequate,” he said.
“We talk a lot about Made in Italy, but there is a real myopia with regard to our musical heritage, envied throughout the world,” said maestro Antonio Caroccia, who teaches music history at the Santa Conservatory. Cecilia of Rome. He said that “politicians are deaf to it”.
“Italy is far behind” many other countries, said Barbara Minghetti, of Opera education, which creates programs for children. “That I can guarantee.”
While in the Italian Parliament, Michele Nitti, a musician and former 5 Star Movement MP, proposed a law adding music education to school curricula. His bill was never submitted to a parliamentary vote.
He said even Giuseppe Verdi, the 19th-century composer who also served in Parliament, failed in his time to convince his fellow lawmakers to support music education in schools.
Mr. Nitti also failed to convince lawmakers to declare opera singing a national treasure. He supported the country’s winning bid have the opera singing practice in Italy inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
“Well,” he said.
Rather than let its opera culture wither, Mr. Giambrone said: “Italy should teach other countries how it is done.”
At the Teatro Costanzi, more than half of the children at the sleepover belonged to scout troops from Rome’s outlying neighborhoods. They were accompanied by cool-headed scout leaders who – impressively – commanded silence simply by raising a finger.
Most of the children had never been to the theater before. “Come to think of it, I didn’t go either,” said Gianpaolo Ricciarelli, one of the parents who dropped his son off.
Another father, Armando Cereoli, said: “Between video games, cell phones and Netflix, there is stiff competition to get children interested in beautiful things. »
Some children came from disadvantaged neighborhoods, so the visit was “a chance to free their minds and dream,” said Sara Greci, a Scout leader and Red Cross worker who brought four girls from a shelter for abused women and their children.
The opera runs several outreach programs for the homeless or people living in Rome’s most remote neighborhoods, a way of opening the theater to the city and broadening its reach, said Andrea Bonadio, who been hired by the theater to work on such programs. programs.
Nunzia Nigro, the theater’s director of marketing and education, said several of the children who participated in the theater’s educational programs over the past 25 years are now loyal customers. “We’re starting to reap some of those efforts and have a younger audience,” she said.
Ms. Nigro helped organize the sleepover, tailoring it for children ages 8 to 10 — old enough to sleep away from home but not old enough for hormones to kick in, she said. As it was, two boys were homesick enough that their mother came to pick them up.
On Saturday, the children attended a rehearsal of an upcoming performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony: “the conductor uses a baton to direct the music, not so different from Harry Potter but more important,” said said Ms. Nigro. They learned how staff cleaned the largest chandelier in the world in a historic building, and they learned the ins and outs of theater via a scavenger hunt (read general mayhem) that had them running up and down stairs, in and out of stalls like a multi-character French farce .
Emma the ghost — Valentina Garganoa soprano from the opera’s young artists program — delivered an encore, demanding that the children tell their friends about “this magical place” and come back when they grow up.
One girl was so convinced that Ms. Gargano was a real ghost that organizers arranged for them to meet while the soprano was in street clothes.
After listening to music, including Brahms’ classic lullaby, the children settled in (or tried to) in a patchwork of sleeping bags on an artificial green lawn used in a previous production of Madama Butterfly. Above them were oversized photos of some of the stars who performed at the Costanzi, such as Maria Callas, Herbert von Karajan and Rudolf Nureyev.
On Sunday, after breakfast, the children participated in workshops where they designed colorful paper ballet costumes, learned basic ballet positions, sang in a choir (some with more enthusiasm than others) and played a version of snakes and ladders on the opera theme. The game was designed and supervised by Giordano Punturo, the opera’s stage manager, dressed in a tuxedo and colorful top hat.
He didn’t know about the kids, he said, “but I had the time of my life.”
After a group sing-along and a photo, it was almost time to go home.
“Did you have fun?” » Mr. Giambrone asked the children. “Yes!!” they applauded. “Did you sleep well?” he asked, to a more mixed response. Several “no”s were notably heard. Come back soon, he said.
After kissing his parents who came to pick him up, Andrea Quadrini, almost 11, couldn’t wait to tell them that his team had won at Snakes and Ladders and that the treasure hunt had been particularly fun.
“Wow,” he said. “I saw an opera theater for the first time.”
