Page 67 - Glasbenopedagoški zbornik Akademije za glasbo v Ljubljani

was a classmate and friend of theirs was also a strong factor in this. Both songs
are very melodic and were vocally very well performed.
The entrance song of the night watchman and the final song sung by the
whole choir of performers were also mentioned as beautiful by 10% of the chil-
dren.
The opera captured the attention of the children and, from their answers
to open-ended questions, they were able to empathize with the characters. This
is shown by the fact that most of them were not distracted by anything, they
liked everything (43%); however, they were very disturbed by the inappropri-
ate behaviour of some people in the auditorium (14%), (they answer the qu-
estion: ‘Was there anything that bothered you?’ by the following: ‘people cha-
tting’, ‘someone taking photos’, ‘rude people sitting in front of me’) and also by
the behaviour of the characters on stage that children found troubling (‘when
the Bedanec was bullying people’, ‘when the Kekec was fooling Rožle’). Perfor-
mance errors were also noted and were disturbing to them (22%) (‘sometimes
the orchestra was louder than the soloists’, ‘I didn’t like Kekec’s high voice’, ‘I
didn’t like Bedanec’s singing’, and three children answered that they did not Katarina Kompan Erzar, Katarina Habe ◆ THE CAPACITY OF YOUTH OPERA TO ENHANCE THE EMOTIONAL SKILLS OF YOUNGER ADOLESCENTS
like the more scary moments of the story (‘when Bedanec caught Kekec’, ‘when
Bedanec kidnapped Mojca’).
Children mentioned also some technical issues: ‘bad microphone’, ‘hard
seats’, ‘lights from behind’, ‘murmuring’, ‘that the text in captions was not the
same as in the singing’.
It was surprising for us that 68 out of 77 children (88%) expressed their
wish to go to the opera again, even though most of them did not attend the
opera before. This was a positive surprise since research suggests that children
who have never attended an opera performance and have never taken part in
such a performance more often expressed a prejudiced opinion about this form
of art (Kuzmina, 2022). Perhaps the lack of one’s own aesthetic experience in
such cases is made up for by the opinion of adults or peers, and seeing peers
enjoying or even performing at such an event could help change opinions and
give children permission to enjoy the experience as well.
Most of the children (71%) indicated on the questionnaire that they also
wanted to read the story of Kekec after the opera, which means that the perfor-
mance engaged them and awakened their curiosity as well as their interest in
reading. The data is summarized in the following table (Table 3).

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