News

Read about our last work: Figaro qua! Figaro là - sheet 1; sheet 2.

Presentation

Let us introduce ourselves: we are Laura di Biase and Fiorella Colombo and we are or have been both teachers in a primary school in Genoa, at the Istituto Comprensivo San Fruttuoso as well as superintendent for the Opera Laboratory with the Museo Luzzati, Genoa.
We wish to let you know about our textbooks aimed at supporting the approach and development of musical education for children of primary and lower secondary schools.

These volumes are sponsored by the Theatre Carlo Felice of Genoa, by the Museo Luzzati and by the Associazione Mozart Italia (Mozart Society Italy). These texts are the fruit of our ten-year long experience in conducting a musical and theatre laboratory.
The special feature of our approach to music consists in bringing the children into contact with operas through a multidisciplinary path: linguistic, historical, geographic and, naturally, musical.

The first volume "Recitar cantando" summarizes the whole of our long term experience and the didactics employed in these years.

It is actually a "teaching tool", intended for teachers and educators, offering a variety of hints and ideas as well as practice cards. It is meant to propose a possible way of teaching music in the primary and secondary schools through an approach to the opera.
There are fully developed not only the aims of music didactics programs, but also the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary aspects, from history to literature, from geography to physics, enabling quite an ample long-term planning.

The second volume "Il Flauto Magico" (The Magic Flute) is a practical text drawn up by re-interpreting - in an original way – the opera by W. A. Mozart; it contains the rhymed theatre script, worked out and staged last year, the sheet music for scoring, rhymes and drawings for younger children.
Enclosed with the book there are a CD containing 13 Arias selected for listening and 4 scores for the performance, some useful and detailed hints for scene setting and the full plot of the opera to help teacher with the staging.

In the third volume,"Le Nozze di Figaro" (The Marriage of Figaro) (with a CD of selected arias and scores), following up the Series "Recitar cantando" (after "Il Flauto Magico"), we tackled another very famous opera by Mozart. This volume too contains a rhymed script, re-interpreted from the original opera, a rhymed presentation of the story illustrated with drawings to be coloured, the arrangements of the arias selected for scoring. In the appendix, the plot of the opera, and a short historical and literary excursus on the character of Figaro and on the origins of the opera.

The fourth volume, "Musical!" contains some proposals for a musical theatre program to be developed in progress at school (6/10 years-old children), with five unpublished scripts, dealing with themes such as inter-culture, traditional fairy tales, emotional education, facing and overcoming fears. Such scripts are set out according to their increasing complexity.

The fifth volume "Recitare in musica" (Act in Music) (including Edvard Grieg's "Peer Gynt" CD) suggests a way of  "playing with theatre while living out the music". It is a teaching tool that proposes a method for planning a performance by illustrating point by point each stage of the actual production: from thinking up to body training (with over a hundred explanatory pictures), including a guide to mindful listening as well as notes on ten well known composers and their works. It includes an original "Peer Gynt" script, with stage-setting hints for performance with children.

We are at your full disposal for any further information. Please send us an e-mail to the following address: info AT recitarcantando.net.

We will answer to everyone!