Seattle Opera's Youngest Singers
Seattle Opera's Teen Vocal Studio and Youth Opera Program members star in Kamala Sankaram and Kelley Rourke's youth opera, The Jungle Book.
Formal training for classical singers begins later than for other classical musicians, and it’s unheard of to have a 15-year-old play Butterfly or even a young adult play the young Siegfried. Very few roles in the operatic canon are actually written for youth, but luckily, kids and teens can participate in youth operas. In early February 2023, Seattle Opera gave young opera fans a chance to perform when they staged The Jungle Book, a youth opera, composed by Kamala Sankaram and written by Kelley Rourke.
Seattle Opera has two main youth programs, Youth Opera Project (for ages 7-18) and Teen Vocal Studio (audition-only for high school students), and various shorter programs that run during school breaks. Usually, Youth Opera and TVS combine each year to put on an annual youth opera, with Youth Opera members singing in an ensemble and TVS taking on the few adult roles in the youth operas.
Seattle Opera’s first youth opera production was in 2018 with Robin Hood by Ben Moore and Kelley Rourke, and then they produced Odyssey by Moore and Rourke and Wilde Tales by Laura Karpman and Rourke. During COVID, they did two online youth operas and some other online performances.”
The Jungle Book was the first youth opera after COVID where TVS and the Youth Opera Project ensemble are combined in the cast.'
Sara Litchfield, the Associate Director of Youth Programs for Seattle Opera, picks which youth operas to stage each year and she seeks out works with a positive message for all ages. “I always look at the pieces through either a social emotional lens or EDI [Equity, Diversity and Inclusion] lens,” she states. “Is this a story that promotes the values of equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, which is something that's really important to me, really important to my department and to Seattle Opera?”
In The Jungle Book, an Indian girl Mowgli loses her mother to the tiger Shere Khan, finds herself lost in the jungle, and is ultimately adopted into a wolf pack. Shere Khan apologizes, the wolves forgive him, and the show ends with every animal living happily together. At its core, the opera is about accepting all people and appreciating their differences, a message that the white-male-dominated classical music world could really learn from.
One of the reasons Litchfield chose to stage The Jungle Book this year was because it’s composed by an Indian-American woman who infuses Western classical opera with her culture’s music.
The plot for The Jungle Book came from Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 collection of stories by the same name. Kipling was British, and Sankaram notes that it was complicated to integrate her music with the story’s colonial aspects.
“You have someone British who’s writing about India, who isn’t really doing it from the perspective of being an Indian person,” she says. “So that's part of why it felt important to put actual Indian music which is grounded more in the place where the story takes place.”
The Jungle Book uses sargam, ragas, and konnakol, which are elements of Indian classical singing. Seattle Opera hired Srivani Jade, who is an Indian classical vocalist, composer, and educator, as an Indian music consultant for the opera.
Runeema Arun is a 15-year-old singer and Bharatanatyam dancer who played Mowgli in The Jungle Book. Bharatanatyam is a traditional South Indian dance, and Runeema taught a few ensemble members/dancers the Namaskaram (a prayer and greeting to the Earth, the teacher, and the audience) which starts and ends every dance piece.
Runeema has been in youth operas for nine years, and she said that as an Indian person, The Jungle Book made her feel seen. “It's really cool to see that someone of my culture wrote this show, that people from my culture can also be big in this opera industry, as well as me participating in something that’s close to my culture and heritage.”
Litchfield says that youth opera empowers kids and teens like Runeema both on and off the stage. In learning a role, a young singer has to be self-motivated to work on it at home, learn things about themself, and step out of their comfort zone. The skills that youth operas teach encourage kids to be braver and take risks in their lives, and I’ve experienced that myself.
I sang Raksha in The Jungle Book, and it was my second time in a youth opera. By preparing roles, I’ve learned a lot about characterization and stretched my limits as an actor. My confidence increases each time I perform since I build up bravery to act onstage. If I can act like a wolf mom in front of 200 people, why would I be scared to make new friends at school?
A fellow TVS member, Amelia Stiles, is very involved in musical theater and dance and adds that being in Jungle Book demystified opera for her. She also sang Raksha and The Jungle Book was her first youth opera. “I’ve always felt intimidated by and not ‘fit’ for the opera world. I had a preconceived idea of what I had to sound and look like to be considered an opera singer, but seeing young students thrive off of the true storytelling intent of opera gave me a different view,” she says.
Unlike Amelia, I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about opera because I had no ideas about opera. Coming from a family that was foreign to the art form, I had never watched a full opera before being in one. I had been singing art songs for a few years before I joined TVS but I only got interested in opera after I started learning roles. I began to appreciate the plots, the music, and the camaraderie onstage, so I developed the curiosity to learn about operas sung by adult professionals. I soon watched one, and then another one, and then many more. No amount of reading about opera, being lectured about opera, or even listening to opera could have hooked me as much as singing in a youth opera.