How to Develop Opera's Future Audience

Peter Gelb and the Met are doing something right: Opera in the Park and the open house earlier this week are making a fan out of a 7-year-old New Yorker I know.

Her mom recently wrote -

My best fun of late was going to the Met's open house on Friday with my daughter. It was AMAZING! And FREE! We sat in a box seat and watched the full dress rehearsal of Anthony Minghella's gorgeous production of Madama Butterfly, made paper cranes with one of the show's carpenters, ate lunch in the patron's room, and got to walk across the stage afterward. My daughter was spectacularly fussed over, and that night at dinner, she told her dad, "I heard a lot of people say they'd never forget today, and I don't think I will either."

So now she wants to be Cio Cio San for Halloween. I asked my husband, how old do you think she'll be when she realizes she hates us for turning her into a nerd?

And my response was "You must let me take her to the opera some time!
It's never too early to start listening to Wagner." (Really, is there anything cooler than walking across the stage at the Met?!?!)