last Thursday at the school
Cobar High School students involved in
last week’s Opera Express workshops and
the production of a musical have described
it as “an awesome experience”.
Many of the students had not experienced
opera before (and it’s possibly the last thing
they thought they would be interested in), but
the Opera Express visit last week, under the
guidance of director Murray Dahm, helped to
open their minds and build confidence in their
capabilities.
Cobar High’s music teacher, Laura Andrew,
said the visit was very beneficial to students in
teaching them how to collaborate with their
peers and showed them how all the elements of
a musical and opera come together.
They learnt vocal techniques, how to memorise
lines, how to communicate different feelings
and emotions of a character through acting
and body language and how to communicate
the story to their audience.
“It showed students that they can persevere
and achieve difficult things—it’s not easy to
write an opera from scratch!” Laura said.
“Students learnt how to be democratic when
deciding on characters/plot (early stages) and
when casting roles (after opera written).”
She said it was also a new experience for
students to perform in front of so many people
with over 100 attending the public performance
on Thursday night.
“Many parents/carers were proud of their
student getting up and having a go.
“Because students were involved from start
to finish, they developed the confidence to
perform and they wanted to share what they
had created,” Laura said.
