gary ruschman | opera camp

In 2015, Minnesota Opera commissioned me to compose a thirty-minute children's opera and spend a month working with youth in Worthington, MN to create the piece in partnership with Nobles County Integration Collaborative . Inspired by Toshiro Chisato's The Five Nice Mice, we built a story about breaking down barriers between groups through the act of deliberate welcoming into a new community.

Three hours southwest of the Twin Cities, Worthington is one of Minnesota's most diverse areas, the site of major meat packing plants, with a high immigrant population. The children of these plant workers made up the majority of our performers, who ranged in age for kindergarten to 10th grade.

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Composing the Opera

Knowing that opera requires a tight marriage of music and text, I came up with a technique to capture this aspect right away. I began by having the older kids read to the younger children, and carefully notating the inflections they used to create drama in their narration. Each evening, I'd return to my hotel room and create melodies that matched with those inflections. After a week of this process, I was able to bring in music for the team to learn.

El Sistema

El Sistema is a music educational style pioneered in Venezuela in the 1970s. Founded with a purpose to help children in high deprivation areas to reach their full potential, using teamwork, harmony and ensemble playing. Overcoming social obstacles takes a team approach, and so with a small cadre of local educators, we rehearsed and built a show, a set, marketing materials, costumes, and a wonderful experience of music and dance.







We culminated the month of work in a live performance for parents and community members from nearby towns, with a Q&A about the experience of writing an opera together. The production team included Linda Lund, then Director of NCIC, teachers Erika Bierman, Sarah Anderson, James Jarvie, Soom Chandaswang, and Cindy Anderson.

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Program Notes

"This premiere presentation of Nice Mice and Friendly Frogs is the culmination of a four-week artist residency in Worthington, MN. Over the course of the program, I welcomed the children into the mixture of music, storytelling, visual art, and stage movement that we know as opera, and helped them create a new work based on a wonderful short story of acceptance and trust. Along with theatrical and musical training games, the campers and staff worked through the evocative source material together—giving me the opportunity to take elements of the way the children sang, read, and drew together to write the script, compose set pieces, design costumes, sets, etc.—and also incorporate quotations of well-known songs and classical music about the moon (which features prominently in the story). You may recognize a common choral warm-up exercise “Many Mumbling Mice” woven into the score, and I encourage you to try picking out melodies by The Police, Dvorak, Andy Williams, and others! Working with the Worthington children and staff on this pilot program was inspiring and fun, and I hope you enjoy this short piece that the children had an integral part in creating. Many thanks to Linda, Erika, James, Sarah, Cindy, Soom, Jessica, Aida, and all the parents and staff of NCIC’s El Sistema Imagine!, and especially to Angie Keeton, Jamie Andrews, and Alisa Magallón from Minnesota Opera for their expertise, flexibility, and support."