Preschoolers at the Ellicott City Head Start Center are learning to hit all the right notes, thanks to a local opera singer in residency with the Howard County Arts Council.

Yvette Lewis, a lyric soprano and music educator who has performed with the Washington National Opera and the now-defunct Baltimore Opera Company, is the latest artist-in-residence with the Head StART in ART program.

The Head StART in ART program is a partnership between the Ellicott City Head Start Center, a federally funded program, and the Howard County Arts Council. Through the program, preschool children are given hands-on access to in-depth art experiences ranging from dancing to painting — or, in Lewis’ case, singing.

Since Nov. 8, Lewis, of Bowie, has been teaching six classes of 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds in Head Start classes. The 50-some students, who spent more than a month learning the concept of opera, will perform Lewis’ original operas based on “The Little Red Hen” and “The Gingerbread Man” for friends, family and the public Wednesday at the Black Box Theatre at the Howard County Center for the Arts, in Ellicott City.

The students in the Head Start program are from low-income families and otherwise might not be exposed to such influences, Lewis said.

“This can be a steppingstone for other cultural and classical experience, whether it be art or dance or drama,” she said. “This can be a pathway for them being willing to accept other art forms.

“Kids this young should be exposed to all kinds of things because this is the time they’re most receptive. It’s an age before they have a chance to be tainted or influenced negatively in any way. They come at anything you give them with the purest sense of acceptance.”

Lewis meets with the classes twice a week for half an hour, during which time the students sing and work on art projects.

Students ‘all smiles’

Laura Vittetoe, a teacher with Head Start, said her students get excited when they know Lewis is coming into the classroom.

“They’re all smiles,” she said. “They stop what they’re doing, clean up really quick, and they’re ready to learn whatever she has. She makes it so much fun for them, and they really enjoy it.
“The songs are really catchy, too. I go home singing it for the rest of the day.”

She isn’t the only one: Another teacher, Maria Irizamy, reviews the songs her students learned with Lewis before dismissal. She then goes home and teaches the songs to her son.

“The songs are great,” Irizamy said. “The kids love (Lewis). They learn the music really fast; they enjoy it and have fun. It’s good to see these kinds of arts in the school because kids aren’t always exposed to art at home, and it’s an important thing for schools to bring out their creativity.”

When the students aren’t singing, they’re listening to Lewis tell them stories about the operas they’re learning. Actually, when it comes to teaching opera, Lewis said, the music is the last thing she introduces.

“Always begin with a story,” she said. “I want to give them an understanding of what opera is, which is a story that you sing.”

The only problem with teaching children opera, Lewis said, is that most operas are inappropriate for the age group. Still, she wanted to introduce children to the concept of a “singing story.” So she wrote her own based on stories the kids already knew.

The simplification makes opera appropriate and approachable, which Lewis acknowledged isn’t always the case.

“People don’t understand it,” she said. “A lot of times, it’s in a language that you don’t understand, and, frankly, sometimes (opera singers) can be off-putting. We tend to believe the drama. That’s just the nature of the beast, which is why I try to make it as simple as possible.”

Lewis, whose residency here ends after the students’ performance, spent 12 years as an elementary school music teacher in Montgomery County during the day. By night, she was performing with organizations such as the Washington National Opera and Baltimore Opera Company.

She needed time to practice her music, so she wound up teaching her students the opera she was singing at the time. What evolved from that busy and frantic schedule became her life’s work, she said.

“I developed an entire opera curriculum based on my need to practice,” she said. “The entire situation was kind of hard, but I didn’t want to give up, either. I’m a trained classical singer, but I love working with kids. This is a perfect marriage of the things I treasure.”

Stepping up music appreciation Sandy Plains students test operatic voices

by Christina Radice

Getting children enthused to go to the opera seems hard enough. Teaching them to actually sing arias approaches the impossible.

But Yvette Lewis does it. Really well.

The opera singer and former schoolteacher spent six days at Sandy Plains Elementary over the past two weeks doing her thing.

For the past 10 years, Lewis has introduced children to the musical art form through her self-developed program, “So This is Opera.”

“The children are really loving it, and Ms. Lewis is just amazing,” said art teacher Jenny O’Flaherty last week as she watched three first-grade classes practice with the singer. “This is so special to have somebody like this here at the school.”

In July a group of teachers attended the Maryland State Arts Council’s seminar at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., where Lewis performed and conducted a workshop on how educators can incorporate opera into their curricula.

“We knew we wanted to have her as soon as we saw her,” said Sandy Plains reading teacher and arts coordinator Stephanie Kimmons.

The focus at Sandy Plains this year is reading, Kimmons said, and part of the school’s plan was to invite two artists-in-residence to further integrate the arts into drama and poetry.

The Maryland State Arts Council grants money to pay for half of Lewis’s cost, but the schools are responsible for the rest. At Sandy Plains, the PTA raised $1,250 for the cause.

Lewis, who grew up in North Carolina and now lives in Columbia, Md., began singing opera when she was 16. She majored in voice and music education at Howard University in Washington. After graduating, she taught in Baltimore City, then Montgomery County, then spent her evenings singing with the Baltimore and Washington opera companies, where she still performs.

“But no one was doing opera for kids,” Lewis said, explaining why she created her program, adding that she was unwilling to give up teaching or singing. “This is the best of both worlds.”

She teaches at about 10 schools a year and averages almost 200 performances for kids annually. The territory she’s covered includes Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Virginia, North and South Carolina and even upstate New York.

Through “So This is Opera,” Lewis tells students the story of an opera, shows them videos to help them understand it and teaches them selected arias. She also developed a curriculum that has students involved in other activities, such as research about the opera, when they are not under her instruction. Finally, they give a performance of what they’ve learned. Last Thursday, Sandy Plains students prepared with Lewis for in-school performances they held the next day and a concert for parents in the evening. “Somebody’s been eating my soup! … Someone’s been sleeping in my bed!” the tiny first-graders sang in high-pitched voices while matching hand motions with the lyrics.

They were rehearsing the original operetta that Lewis developed from Robert Fiske’s The Three Bears. The third through fifth grades studied selections from The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, Madame Butterfly, Carmen and Tales of Hoffmann and even learned songs in French, Italian and German. “They are great and so enthusiastic,” Lewis said of the students. “And unbelievably appreciative.”

The enthusiasm was evident as the students gathered in the cafeteria Friday to show off their new talent. They whispered loudly to one another, trying to hush their excitement as they eagerly waited to perform.

“I’m feeling a little sad because this is our last time,” Lewis told the group. “But I want you to get up on stage and show off what you can do.” And they sang away, mouths wide open and bopping to the thumping piano, working out the kinks for their appearance before almost 400 parents who would watch them that night.

Some students clanked on bell sets in accompaniment, not always in sync with the beat, and some struggled to reach the music’s higher notes. Nonetheless, these elementary schoolers can now say they’ve sung opera. Can you?

Pedagogues Preach Puccini to Pupils Davis Drive Elementary School starts opera program

by Thomas Melville

Some day, Triangle residents will ignore the ACC or NCAA tournaments, dress to the nines and enjoy an evening out of beautiful, lyric orchestrations of dramatic and emotional power.

Giacomo Puccini’s or Amadeus Mozart’s classic music will replace the referee’s whistle and the announcer’s inflated enthusiasm for a game that will soon be forgotten.

“Would I go to the opera?” Bradley Arnell, a third-grader at Davis Drive Elementary, asked himself last Monday. Well, it depends what’s on TV that night.” Some things may never change, but at Davis Drive Elementary, teachers are planting the seeds of refinement and attempting to sweeten the taste of opera to about 1,100 students at the school.

The elementary school is in the second year of its “So this is Opera” program and has invited back artist in residence Yvette Lewis for an eight-day lesson that will culminate in two evenings of student mini-operas.

Last year the program only included the third through fifth grades and was a big hit with staff and students. This year the school wanted to expand the program and enlisted PTA volunteer Jennifer Yasick.

Yasick’s Impressive grant writing skills brought in $2,100 from the Unite Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, $3,000 from the NC arts Council and $500 that the school’s PTA chipped it. The $5,600 allowed the school to add all grades (K-5) to the program.

And when the time came to teach the students opera, Lewis, a lyric soprano who has performed in operas across the globe, was clearly in charge. Last Friday, Lewis, looking fit and poised in a brown suit (even after seven classes have passed through) stood behind a piano in the media center and firmly took over the room.

She told a group of third-graders about a Japanese girl named Madame Butterfly, who was jilted by her American lover. Well, she told the youngsters the G-rated version of the Puccini opera and then answered questions about the story.

Soon after, Lewis had the student singing the famous aria and plunking the xylophones in front of them.

“I know a lot of opera is inappropriate for children,” Lewis said. “So we whitewash some of it and they get the gist of the story. That makes opera accessible to them.”

Lewis, who is also teaching Mozart’s the magi Flute and The Marriage of Figaro along with Georges Bizet’s Carmen, said that she chooses operas with beautiful music for the students.

“I try to select operas with pretty music, she said. “It is easier for them to sing and remember.” Lewis, who is originally from Charlotte, has been teaching operas in schools up and down the east coast for 10 years and believes the program will help bring audiences back to the theater.

“Opera gets a bad rap because people do not understand it,” she said. “With this program we get to them before they are poisoned.”

For Arnell, who sang loudly throughout the lesion, the session changed his mind about opera.

“I had heard of it but I had never heard it before, ” he said. “I didn’t think it would be every good but it was pretty good. It was better than class.” Third-grader Emily Walukas, whose aunt is an opera singer in Michigan, is excited about seeing an opera someday, but not about singing in one. “I think I would rather play the instruments,” Walukas said.

The eight-day program will culminate in student performances this week. On March 30, third-graders will perform pieces from Madame Butterfly, fourth-graders will share selections from Carmen and fifth graders will perform parts of The Marriage of Figaro. The performances will be at the school from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Lessons in the key of ‘gee’ Who would have thought kids these days could have this much fun learning about opera?

KATE RAUHAUSER-SMITH Daily Record staff

Papageno, the bird catcher for the Queen of the Night, wanted a wife – a special, beautiful bird-loving girl. Instead, an old, toothless hag sat next to him and offered to marry him. She asked only that he give her one kiss.

His long search for just the right woman had brought him no one and he didn’t want to be alone . . . “so he closed his eyes, held his nose and kissed her,” the storyteller paused, fixed her audience with a knowing gaze and said, “on the lips.”

“Ewwwwwww!”

The universal sound of revulsion bounced around the room as Goode Elementary School’s third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students hung on her every word. The storyteller was opera lyric soprano Yvette Lewis. She laughed with them and finished the story from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” The 775 students at Goode paid close attention to Lewis during two assemblies Tuesday morning.

“Opera is storytelling,” Lewis said Tuesday morning. “The story keeps their attention.”

The York Symphony Orchestra Auxiliary sponsored Lewis’ program. Joan Dockey, chairwoman of the group’s education committee, saw Lewis at Leib Elementary School in the Dover school district last year and was impressed. She arranged to bring Lewis to the York City School District.

Lewis was an elementary school music teacher who sang opera part-time. She taught for 10 years in the Baltimore City and Montgomery County schools in Maryland before she developed her program 12 years ago. She performs the program, “So, This is Opera” about 200 times a year.

“I used opera in my classrooms but didn’t see it presented in any showcases prepared for students,” she said. “What I saw there was the same thing kids could get on the weekend. I know how important class time is, if they are missing instructional time, they should be getting something new.”

Many studies, most recently from the University of California, show a strong connection between a child’s exposure to music and their mathematics and science ability. Music, especially complex music such as opera and classical, strengthens the brain’s ability to accurately visualize problems and differences in objects, the studies show.

Lewis also wants to expose children to opera before they form prejudices.

Nancy Justice, a fourth-grade teacher at Goode, asked her students what they thought of opera before the assembly. “They don’t like it. It’s loud music with no words,” she said.

“They have no concept that it’s a play, either,” she said as her students found seats on the bleachers.

Fourth-grader Tobbyn Snyder, 9, likes the rap group DMX best, but now he likes opera, too, he said. He didn’t think he would like the program, but he came out laughing. The stories were good, he said, because they were funny.

Principal Franklin Gantz and many staff members were surprised at how attentive the pupils were during the program. “We think young people today are only interested in popular music,” he said. “It’s just a matter of exposing them to it.”

Papageno, by the way, did end up with a wife. His kiss had been enough to bring the ugly hag’s inner beauty to the surface and they lived happily ever after.

TO LEARN MORE

Brief summaries of the most popular opera stories can be found on the Internet at www.infoplease.com. Scroll down to “Entertainment” and click “Performing Arts,” then click “Favorite Opera Stories.”

There are many books written with opera stories. Two, recommended by Amazon.com are, for children, “Sing Me a Story: The Metropolitan Opera’s Book of Opera Stories for Children” by Jane Rosenberg and Luciano Pavarotti and, for adults, “100 Great Operas and their Stories” by Henry W. Simon.

Magical, Lyrical Lessons

by Angelea Hoogerheide

“Now, when someone asks you if you know about opera, you can say, Not only do I know about opera, I can sing it in German!” proclaimed Yvette Lewis to a group of anxious third-graders who beamed after successfully mastering lyrics in a foreign language from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.”

Sitting crossed-legged on the floor of the music room, the young students focused their eyes up on the woman behind the piano who guided them through lines from Mozart’s tale of fantasy. Little lips pursed, the children practiced sounding out the hard German consonants. “Das klinget, sö herlich. Das klinget, so schoe’n,” they echoed in response to their teacher with the crystal clear voice.

Having earlier sung those lyrics in English, “Hear the jingling, so splendid! Hear the jingling, so clear,” the third-graders giggled as Lewis appealed to them to sing softly, convincing them that softness gave the music a sweeter quality.

Concentration was on the brow of each face as students also took turns playing the xylophone. Coordination was at hand while tiny fingers gripping mallets pounded out notes in sync with the songs. There was a reason to grasp the lessons with precision: at the end of the week students would have a sharing session and show their peers in other grades what they have learned.

“The Magic Flute” is a celebration of wisdom, honesty and brotherhood tied in the magic of dreams and imagination. It tells the story of a brave, noble prince and his birdcatcher friend, armed only with magic bells and an enchanted flute, who set out on a musical quest to rescue a beautiful princess and find true love.

Lewis, opera singer and artist in residence at Lexington Park Elementary School, has spent the last week teaching each grade level the basics of the operatic art form. Designed to offer experience and exposure with one opera per grade, the week-long workshops are funded in part by the Maryland State Arts Council and the school.

Throughout the week students viewed videotaped excerpts from their opera, learned either an aria or chorus from the opera and learned an instrumental accompaniment for the music. Each class met with Lewis twice a week for 45-minute sessions. There were creative writing, art and other interdisciplinary activities featuring opera that were done in the classroom when students were not working directly with Lewis.

Students used crossword puzzles and word searches to reinforce vocabulary words, and a teacher workshop included an overview of the week and activities that could be used in the classroom to compliment Lewis’ residency.

The workshops “give students exposure to different arts they wouldn’t normally get,” said Kelly Dobson, instructional resource teacher in charge of the program. “We bring (the program) to the school through arts grants. We try to do something different every year.”

The students will perform what they have learned in an assembly on Monday afternoon. “Each grade level studies something different, so we share with each other in the end,” Lewis explained. The assembly “gives the students the opportunity to perform as well as share” in the company of their classmates.

Along with the third-graders’ study of Papageno’s arias in “The Magic Flute,” other grades will examine “The Three Bears Operetta,” “Madame Butterfly,” “Carmen,” “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Tales of Hoffman.”

Lewis lives in Columbia and has taught students throughout the state introductory lessons in opera as an artist in residence for the last 10 years. Interested in the art since age 15, Lewis has performed with the Baltimore Opera, the Baltimore Symphony and the Washington Opera among others.

Opus-Pocus: Opera Singer, Kids Share Magical Time

by REGINA LIGHTFOOT-CLARK, Special Correspondent

Picture this: Opera singer Yvette Lewis performing for students at Ashley Park Elementary School, singing a song about a beautiful witch casting a spell on a hunter.

Before it’s over, it is Lewis who has cast a spell on students.

When I was younger, I wasn’t going to sing this stuff either,” Lewis told students during Tuesday’s performance at the math and science magnet school. “I was going to sing rock ‘n’ roll.”

As a teen, Lewis, who now performs on stage in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., had met Aretha Franklin and Michael Jackson through her father, Willie Walker. He was a program director at what was then WGIV-AM in Charlotte.

“When I was in high school some friends and I got together and started a rock singing group – the Hot Chilies,” she said. “We sang Shake It Up, Baby.’ I was good.”

But Lewis says her voice started changing. Eventually singing the song hurt her throat. “I found out what music I was supposed to sing,” she said. The day Lewis fell in love with opera, she had been sent to her room because she hadn’t cleaned it. Mad at her mother, Lewis turned the radio up as loud as she could and began flipping stations.

“I came across this lady making weird sounds. And every single time that lady made a sound, I could, too,” she said.

“I listened to that lady for three hours,” Lewis said.

Lewis’ appearance at Ashley Park was a family affair. Her brother, Charlotte jazz musician Willie Walker, is the music teacher there. Lewis’ mother, Mildred Donald, is the coordinator of magnet schools, and her sister, Claudia Ollivierre, attended Tuesday’s show.

Wednesday, Lewis performed at Chantilly Elementary School.

She teaches students about opera through challenges and teasing seasoned with education and discipline. Before students realize it, they’re singing opera, too.

“Before I start singing I have to do exercises,” she told Ashley Park students. She took a deep breath and counted to 100. Then, she took another. The students took a deep breath and counted to 50, then to 75. “Yes! Give yourselves a big hand,” Lewis said.

Next, Lewis explains that opera tells a story, and in the story, everyone sings. “Opera singers have to say their words very carefully and make sure they pronounce all the words. That’s called diction,” she said. Before Lewis is through, the children have unwittingly learned the definitions for opera, aria (song), cue, orchestra, soloist and conductor. When Lewis finished her song about the beautiful witch, she recruited some students to portray the witch and the hunter. Hands shot up.

“What’s really exciting to see is the cynicism at the beginning and then they’re falling over themselves at the end to sing opera,” Lewis said. Lewis visits schools throughout Maryland, where she lives, and in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey.

As her finale at Ashley Park, Lewis sang a duet with her brother.

“I want you to remember three things about opera,” she said. “All opera singers don’t have horns growing out of the tops of their heads; all opera singers do not break glass when they sing and all opera singers don’t weigh 900 pounds.”

Her goal is to make students see opera differently.

“I don’t expect them to go out tomorrow and buy an opera record,” she said, “but if they see it on TV, I hope they’ll stop and spend some time with it.”