Australia is currently responding to an international trend that encourages social inclusion and the provision of equal opportunity for all. In a climate that is encouraging and supporting social inclusion, it can be enriching to look back at Australia's history and consider the benefits that have been gained in a previous era when people were…

This article describes a music programme in an Australian early learning centre. Through a repertoire of songs, games and instruments, the children were introduced to music forms, including opera. Mozart's Magic Flute was presented to these children by watching the Metropolitan Opera's latest film performance. Because this opera seized the…

This article reports on a five-year Australian study where pre-service primary and secondary teachers were encouraged to enhance their creativity through the development of ethnographic operatic performances. The creativity focus of this project was the important aspect of risk-taking and daring. The methodological basis for the study is…

This paper reports two projects done by children in Hong Kong, adapting the Reggio experience to fit the local needs of the community and the children. As Carla Rinaldi said, children are constantly "in search of meaning, finding the sense and meaning of things we do" (Lee, 2001, p. 29). The first project documented how children of the…

The world of classical music, says the writer, has always been international, and has now become truly global. Opera is perhaps traditionally, and most conspicuously, global. At any performance of the Metropolitan Opera of New York, for example, one encounters several different nationalities on stage, back stage, and in the orchestra pit. But the…

Offers examples of dramatic experiences (student produced soap operas) in two classrooms in British comprehensive secondary schools. Concludes that students in other countries would find such experiences as meaningful and enjoyable as their British counterparts. Notes that the two teachers managed to be flexible, appropriating effective…

Created for the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) in-service program at Webster University (St. Louis, Missouri), this series of seminars, presented over a 9-day period, focuses on a comparative study of four operas set in the time period of the French Revolution. The operas examined are: (1) Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" (1786); (2)…