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Tarantula
They are big and hairy and very scary, with venomous fangs to rival many snakes: tarantulas. Kicking off the season in hair-raising fashion, the award-winning documentary Tarantula exposes the secret lives of these ancient crawlers. They have been roaming our planet for more than 350 million years and survived to become the giants of the spider kingdom, with a reputation to match-their name alone provokes fear and loathing!

It’s Hip To Be/Play A Square!
What would Boxing Day be without… well, boxes? Today’s Radio 2 Video Fest offerings feature music created on musical boxes. No, not the wind-up kind that Frank Mills memorialized with his piano tune, but box-shaped instruments. As you’ll see here, some are modified with strings and things, some are played “as is”. Learn about the Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza Festival held in Huntsville, Alabama.

Through the Opera Gateway
The Magic Flute – it is (perhaps along with La Boh me) the perfect gateway opera. What better way for children to discover the art form than with ancient Egypt, a lost Prince, a boastful birdcatcher, an exotic Queen with a quest to free a captured Princess, and – last but certainly not least – an enchanted musical instrument? Mozart’s enduring masterpiece Die Zauberfl te was created with librettist Emanuel Schikaneder in 1791 and was an immediate success, reaching it’s hundredth performance in just over a year. The opera was created as a singspiel (a mix of sung and spoken parts) and Mozart cast a selection of his favourite singers and comic actors to bring the story to life. With this in mind, the arias for the singers are complex and challenging, those for the actors are comparatively simple. This balance of elements is just one of the many reasons this opera makes a great place for children to start with the genre. The original two-act opera The Magic Flute has been given countless productions and dozens of adaptations for film, stage, and the printed page. Surely one of the most popular adaptations is this year’s one-act production at The Met. Julie Taymor (see previous post for accolades) has created a spectacular production complete with her trademark giant puppets and gravity-defying set and costume designs. Following the opera, Bill Richardson will host a discussion about meeting the demand for new operatic works for children. Dean Burry is the composer of works such as “The Hobbitt” (created in 2004 for the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus) and “Pandora’s Locker,” an opera for high-school audiences inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Pandora’s Box. Singer-songwriter Veda Hille is the composer and librettist of “Jack Pine,” an environmental opera based on the children’s book of the same title by Christopher Patton with illustrations by Cyb le Young (Groundwood Books). It will be presented through the Vancouver Opera in Schools program beginning in February 2009. Also today, SATO will feature a recent Naxos recording of the first opera written specifically for television – the popular Christmas story “Amahl and the Night Visitors, by Giancarlo Menotti. A full synopsis of today’s opera follows.