Henry saw Cyrano before you did!

Henry's fourth and fifth grade Gifted Support classes attended a pre-opening performance of the new opera, Cyrano, at the Academy of Music.

What did the students think? In their own words:

What we did to prepare for the play was read the opera and acted it out. We also learned some French. We ate crepes. We wrote about the characters’ feelings toward each other. What I think about the play was that it was very passionate. It talked about love and hatred. – GWS

To know more about the play, we watched the documentary of the Cyrano, the making. I thought they were very determined to do all that work, such as writing the script in la Français, and casting, etc. – AD

I loved the way they used characteristics in the opera. I could see their feelings, not just through the face expressions but through how the tempo of their voice went up and down. I could understand some of what they were saying without the subtitles, since I practiced some French while in class with Dr. Rubin. And I knew what the whole opera was about because I practiced the astonishing play in GS class and we read the script and played some of the characters. When I saw the real French, amazing, magnificent work of art, opera in person, it was just the way I imaged it, and when I say “I imagined it,” I mean it was AWESOME! - KJ

When preparing for Cyrano I was already excited. In second grade an opera group came to my school. Ever since I had liked opera. As soon as I heard of Cyrano I wanted to go immediately. First, we read the opera’s script. After each act we wrote answers to the questions we got with the script. Later, we learned a bit of French. Once the play started, we were sucked down into a romantic French story. Cyrano was brave, witty and poetic. While the scenery sucked you in, the music displayed and amplified the emotions. It was beautiful, and poetic. I loved it. – MG

I felt that for a week we were actually in France. French entertainment, French food, French language, French everything. The play was far more work than I expected. They had lighting, costumes, scenery, even fencing classes. Yet they did it so well – how they changed the background so fast seem almost like magic. The singing was great. Marian Pop’s loud booming voice and Evelyn Pollock’s soft but loud voice really balanced each other out. The makeup was also terrific. Turning Marian Pop into Cyrano must be very hard, but Cyrano looked just like I imagined. – GT