BENEFITS OF OPERA: THE MAGIC FLUTE

Listening to opera has huge benefits for children:  through opera children can understand character development, learn to be tolerant and understand other cultures, increase their language skills, stimulate their imagination, make connections across artistic disciplines and develop their understanding of music and their appreciation for the arts. Opera is also an excellent way to teach language to children, because opera is literature that it is alive.

As splendidly expressed in this quote by  tenor Luciano Pavarotti :  “If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them”.

I feel that it is not necessary for parents to be an opera aficionado in order to introduce their children to opera. You can simply expect the music to speak for itself and enjoy it! Some parents might rule out opera as an acceptable family art form because they might  think that their child “won’t understand it”. From my personal experience, I think that you can bring an adolescent to the opera and expect a lot from them. Even small children can enjoy  this beautiful and traditional art form.

For all those parents that would like to introduce their children to opera, I think that a great option might be through Mozart’s music. His  opera The Magic Flute  has all the essential fairy tale elements that children love: Prince Tamino must save Princess Pamina from her evil mother, the Queen. Three lovely ladies give him a magic flute that will charm animals and humans… It is a magical and captivating story that children love.

The Magic Flute, edited exquisitely by Kókinos, is an extraordinary book with CD. Illustrated by Nathalie Novi, and narrated by Jean-Pierre Kerloc’h, the book is an adaptation of the opera’s libretto, and it also includes the German text – and the translation-  of most arias from the opera.

The CD with  55 minutes of music is an outstanding summary of the most knowned moments of the opera, including the famous Papageno’s aria. This CD has the highest musical quality as possible: recorded in Viena, under the artistic direction of Walter Legge, the music is performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Maestro Herbert von Karajan, with Anton Dermota, Irmgard Seefried, Erich Kunz, Wilma Lipp, Ludwig Weber and Emmy Loose as soloists.

This printed version of the Magic Flute is truly a work of art for the whole family and would be an amazing gift not only for children, but also for parents that might be interested in learning more about opera.