Sistema Toronto has partnered with the Canadian Opera Company to bring their Opera Makers program to our students. 

Opera Makers aims to introduce children to opera through hands-on activities that explore every element of an opera, from storytelling and composition, to performance and design. Participants will create their own operas, rooted in the spirit of co-creation, that tell the stories of their communities through music. Programming will be created by COC teaching artists in collaboration with local partners. Beginning on September 22, 2020, the COC will collaborate with Sistema teaching artists to provide weekly online workshops to Sistema Toronto students as part of their regular online music education programming. Students will learn what opera is, what it means to sing classically, and create and compose their own opera.

“We’re incredibly pleased to announce this partnership with the Canadian Opera Company,” says Andres Tucci-Clarke, Managing Director of Sistema Toronto. “Many of our students have attended COC performances in the past and have a basic understanding of opera; however, we’re now able to take this experience a step further by giving our students the chance to learn about all aspects of the opera world in an in-depth way via experiential learning. Furthermore, on top of building music skills we are also a social education program, and this presents a wonderful opportunity for our students to work on self-expression and self-advocacy by sharing the stories of their communities through music. We can’t wait to see this new initiative in action.”

Details of future Opera Makers partnerships will be announced in due course. The original Opera Makers: Activities for Young Creatives, an eight-week tutorial series launched this past summer, is available at coc.ca/OperaMakers.