Opera Hits High Note For Children 4,000 Crowd Kennedy Center

Grand opera may not seem quite the dish for the 3-to-13-year-old set, but more than 4,000 youngsters crowded into Kennedy Center on Monday for two hour-long sessions of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

Nobody told them to applaud, but they did.

The performance included most of the first act.

“You should have heard the oohs and aahs,” said one of the teachers herding 3-year-olds from a Head Start class at Washington’s Wheatley Elementary School.

A few children had to be calmed in teachers’ arms, but most managed to sit fairly quietly, apparently impressed by onstage demonstrations of how operatic smoke, lightning and violin solos are produced.

Sixth-grader Ryan Coates, 12, who never had heard anything like it before, enjoyed the singing of soprano Carla Basto best.

“She was wondering about whether she should love that fellow or not,” Ryan explained sympathetically.

The Italian text sung by the agonizing Violetta - a high-class courtesan of 19th-century Paris - was translated from the Italian in subtitles flashed on a screen above the stage. “La Traviata” translates roughly as “The Woman Gone Wrong.”

Every year since 1991, the Washington Opera’s Education Program, now under director Debra Eileen Evans, has taken thousands of pupils from the Washington area to these programs. On Wednesday, two more performances are planned for 4,000 more children.

“They don’t always behave appropriately,” Evans acknowledged. “Sometimes they giggle and hold their hands over their ears on the high notes.”

Jonathan Smith, 13, has been to two other programs. “I like classical music,” he said a little defiantly.