Education Testimonials
"Opera offers our students a rare exposure to an art form that has an extensive history in Western Culture as a higher aesthetic expression. With live opera, students are able to experience a very different emotional response to the combination of excellent singing, powerful orchestrations, visual feasts of sets and costumes, and an appreciation for a story being communicated in new ways not common to today's child. Opera can often be a reflection of social and political conditions as well as human nature."
...Dale Taylor, Arts Consultant (Ottawa Carleton District School Board)
"At first we said, 'We're just students, how can we make this performance?' But in the end, it actually turned out quite exciting."
...Hillary (Winona Drive Sr. P.S.)
"I'm very proud of what we came up with. wow, we've skyrocketed!"
...Joyce (Winona Drive Sr. P.S.)
"I think every school should do this. It incorporates every subject. We learned so many new and important skills which we probably wouldn't have learned anywhere else. It had singing, it had drama, we had to paint sets, we had to act and we learned about Canadian history."
...Ethan (Winona Drive Sr. P.S.)
“The [Iron Road] study guide and historical background video for teachers provided an excellent resource for linking the arts experience to classroom learning, while raising awareness of a chapter in Canadian history. Tapestry’s brilliant production has opened that chapter and it shall remain so evermore. The outreach project [with students] resulted in an outstanding student production that was such a shot in the arm for the school. The excitement of learning, creating and working with such high calibre artists was a unique opportunity that has touched the lives of students and teachers and changed forever their perception of opera as an elitist and inaccessible art form. Your programme is a model of innovative partnership between artists and educators, between the professional arts community and the educational community that is so desperately needed if we are to improve the quality and delivery of arts education in Ontario schools.”
...Patterson Fardell, Director of Education, Young Peoples’ Theatre
“For the first time, I discovered that the building of the CPR, Canada’s major unifying force until well into the 20th century, was constructed through the blood and tears of thousands of people who came from across an ocean but who have been made transparent in our historical account. This artistic triumph of Iron Roadrepresents a rare and unique opportunity to learn something important. What a glorious beginning Iron Road presents•with music and image that goes beyond the divisions of language, with a drama that transforms the audience. It is, in short, a magnificent learning experience awaiting Canadian children, teen-agers and adults, not only in Ontario but across the country.”
...Walter Pitman, O.C., O. Ont., Ph’d.
Photo: RPSM summer students in the new work studio