Photo by Dan Scullyl
Camille’s Rainbow - Carnegie Hall
'Camille's Rainbow' performed at Carnegie Hall (2022)
Not all opera is operatic in the way most people think of it. This may be especially true of opera written for pre-kindergartners.
“Our cast is composed of classically trained singers,” notes Jill Anna Ponasik, artistic director for Milwaukee Opera Theatre, whose production of Camille's Rainbow opens with a 10 a.m. performance Wednesday May 21 at Expansive (790 N. Milwaukee St., Suite 100B).
Ponasik continues, “Camille's Rainbow is written to sit within a child's vocal register; this encourages them to play with us vocally throughout the performance. When we think of 'opera.' we're often imagining vocal extremes of very, very high, or very, very low singing and big sound. Camille's Rainbow doesn't go there. It has a gentle, playful quality to it, but the central idea is communicated through singing, which pulls us into the territory of opera.”
The opera—with music by Thomas Cabaniss and Saskia Lane and lyrics by Zoe Palmer was commissioned by Carnegie Hall as part of their educational initiatives—provides young children a gentle immersion into sight and sound created with an intent to actually aid their understanding of the world about them.
Or, as Ponasik puts it, “Camille's Rainbow is rooted in research about the way children's brains develop through play. We become verbal by bathing in the sounds of our native language, and by playing with the components of words. We learn about the world around us by moving, stacking and sorting objects. By watching things transform. By witnessing surprising events.”
Camille's Rainbowis dwas esigned especially for those ages 0-4, but is a beautiful, creative work that can also be appreciated by older audiences, Ponasik insists. Indeed, the music for the 2-23 Carnegie Hall production, with harp as the sole accompaniment to the voices, could find favor with aficionados of certain subsets of folk music and serene indie rock. MOT's production will closely follow the Carnegie template.
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“The piece is arranged for four singer-actors and harp,” Ponasik says. “Our performance will be unamplified, unlike the Carnegie Hall production. The songs have brief improvised sections between them, so those will be unique to our cast, and to each performance.
Photo by Dan Scullyl
Camille's Rainbow - Carnegie Hall
'Camille's Rainbow' performed at Carnegie Hall (2022)
“Several of the songs are linked by little segments of improvised music,” she continues. “These keep the performance spontaneous, and responsive to the children in the audience. They engage the children in play with the performers. And they contribute to the way the music flows from beginning to end.”
Both the composed and improvised portions of Rainbow serve a story written like a modern, surreal fairy tale. Ponasik elaborates, "The narrative is sweetly simple. We wander into a world of color with a sleeping Camille at the center of the color wheel. When Camille awakes, her colors abruptly disappear. We then rediscover them, through song, one by one. When Camille has reunited Roo, Boo and Yo, we have a full spectrum, and we sing about everything we can experience through color."
As for how the young members of the audience should react to it all, “Infants are not expected to react in any particular way,” she says. “They are free to move around our playing space and experience the piece in whatever way comes naturally to them.” Finding a space for people who can't yet walk such freedom of movement led to the unorthodox choice of an office space to host an opera.
“This was a difficult piece to find a venue for!” Ponasik declares. “Camille's Rainbow requires a space that is big enough for babies to roam, but small enough to feel cozy. It must be clean, comfortable and baby safe. And it needs to be visually neutral so that the projections can have their intended effect. We also needed space for stroller parking, and a lobby area for families to gather before the performance. We were eventually able to find all of those attributes in an empty office suite!”
And, like so much worthwhile kid-centric artistry, Rainbow can be appreciated by adults, even ones who won't be bringing youngsters they care for to any of MOT's 14 performances of it running through Sunday June 1. In fact, Ponisak welcomes them. “Grown-ups are welcome to attend our performances. We'll have one row of chairs at each performance for those who'd prefer not to sit on the floor with the little ones.”
