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It could be a fairy tale: A beautiful Japanese girl falls in love with a sailor from a foreign land, marries and has a son but is heartbroken when her seafaring husband returns years later with a new wife.
A group of children learned the story of Giacomo Puccini's tragic heroine "Madame Butterfly" at the Poolesville Library on Monday at an opera workshop hosted by the Washington National Opera. Mezzo-soprano Anamer Castrello, a National Opera teaching artist, gave the youths a primer on opera. She told the story of Madefrom the perspective of Sorrow, the only child of U.S. Navy Lt. B.F. Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San, also called Madame Butterfly.
"If you want to have an operatic voice, you elongate your vowels and add a lot of air," Castrello said before having the children introduce themselves by singing their names. "Sometimes you sing very high and sometimes you sing very low, and that's operatic too."
After naming instruments they recognized in a pop-up book illustration of an orchestra, the youths learned a fan dance, banged on drums, made the sound of Cio-Cio-San's tears with a xylophone and sang the "Flower Duet" by throwing silk flower petals in the air and calling out "tutti i fior," Italian for "all the flowers." At the end, the youths sang a humming chorus to help Cio-Cio-San's spirit get to heaven and took their bows as Castrello cheered them on with a hearty "Bravo!"
"I liked the petal dance," said Victoria Robinson, 6, of Poolesville. "My favorite part was when they threw the petals."
"That was pretty," said Hadley Emery, 3, of Dickerson.
Laura Pincock of Damascus said the workshop was a good way to introduce the opera to 6-year-old daughter Kelsea Sprague, who wanted to know if the characters were real people. It can be difficult to bring young children to an opera because they have to be quiet for a long period of time, she said.
"I've taken her to the ballet a lot, but not the opera — I'm trying to wait until she gets older," agreed Liliya Robinson, Victoria's mother.
The Washington National Opera has a variety of community and educational programs and presents family opera workshops at more than 50 libraries in the D.C. area. The Poolesville Library has hosted several of the workshops, branch manager Mark Gochnour said.
"I love the interaction with the kids — I'm a high school music teacher — and I love the reaction when I sing with different voices," said Castrello, who teaches at Suitland High School in Forestville. "They start getting interested in opera and it's a way to encourage them."
