It has been our great mission to create performances that are entertaining for children and adults alike, while exposing audiences to the great works of classical music composers.
- Opera4Kids
In 2016 Victoria Robertson was commissioned by Port Ludlow Performing Arts in Washington State to create a live performance for the underprivileged children in the area. This was the perfect opportunity for her to create a brand new show with opera music for the accompaniment. Victoria spent the year writing “The Enchanted Tail - a story of a princess and a fox” and it was premiered in July 2016 with great success!
“What began as an outreach performance became a stand alone show that was very popular with both the children and the adults,” said Robertson.
It is no wonder that the opera for young audiences was just the right pace, humor, excitement and length, for Robertson is no stranger to the children’s entertainment world. She founded the first princess party agency in San Diego California and ran the business for six years. She folded the company when she relocated to Bainbridge Island, Washington to study with renowned opera maestro Michael Trimble.
“I was pretty green and did not know how to keep my business going strong while I was in anther state focused on another career. Hind sight is 20/20 and I should have reached out more diligently for help, but I knew that I could always go back to the Princess business,” Robertson explained.
In fact, Robertson knew that if she did return to the “Princess business” she wanted to write a theatrical performance instead of focusing on smaller birthday parties. The goal was, she told us, to have more children and less performers to manage instead of having to manage a more and more performers as the company grew. When Port Ludlow approached her with the opportunity to write a new production, she knew that she had her chance.
The perfect opportunity to create a show for kids was with long-time friend and singing business partner Bernardo Bermudez. The two operatically trained singers have been performing together for over ten years and created a whole brand around their show called Duetto. The pair sings duets from operas and musical theater productions and has toured performing arts centers across the west coast. She set out to write a children’s performance to compliment the tour as an outreach program. A fox character was written for Bermudez, the music was prewritten by famous opera composers, and Robertson wrote two other characters for herself (a princess and a witch).
“I was excited to create a new fairytale and the ideas just came to me. I started discussing them with my friends and I was so excited. I received some great input and The Enchanted Tail came to life. I wrote around my limitations which was only two characters and the fact that Bernardo did not have much time to memorize dialogue,” laughed Robertson.
In 2016, Bermudez was traveling a lot with his opera career as a Baritone and Robertson knew that her tight deadline would not leave much time for preparation. The result was that she invented a character for Bermudez who sang a lot but did not have many speaking lines. The plot started to come to life with the woodsman character being turned into a silent fox by the witch because he sang too much. Robertson knew that Bermudez was a great actor, and was very funny with his pantomiming skills, that it seemed like a great fit.
“I cannot really tell you how I came up with the details of the plot, as with all of my writing, once I was in the groove, it just came out! Sometimes I look back and laugh thinking, ‘Did I write that!? It’s so funny!’” smiled Robertson.
Robertson has had a great deal of practice writing as she is a songwriter with two award nominated albums and has been a hobby poet for over two decades. She wrote original music for six years touring with her original bands, Kitty Hipkiss and the Victoria Robertson band, but continues writing songs with her guitar as a hobby and a mental practice.
“I just really love poetry, the way that rhymes come together, and I think that I have a very strong inner child that still allows me to see the world with wonder. I’ve worked with kids all my life as a junior tennis coach, party entertainer, and musical theater director so it just comes naturally.”
The Enchanted Tail was a big success and Bermudez and Robertson continued performing it for small churches and community centers to test the production. Their long time music friend Nina Leilani Deering composed a couple of key instrumental pieces, like The Tail Tango, and improvised the interlude music between songs to accompany the acting happening on stage. This is particularly complimentary of Bernardo’s pantomiming and giving each character a musical personality. Deering’s sensitivity to the characters and the way that the story drama unfolds resembles the great pianists and organists of times long ago who made silent movies come to life.
Robertson came to Bermudez with an idea in 2018. She wanted to perform The Enchanted Tail with orchestra. After all, the music was already orchestrated and in public domain. All they needed to do was find an orchestra willing to take the project on. Bermudez has a great presence in the opera and orchestral community and he began talking to everyone who he met through performances. Not too long after this idea was conceived, Bernardo sang a private house concert for a San Diego Opera event and one of the attendees was Dana Zimbric, the conductor and musical director for Classics4Kids. Bermudez immediately told her about The Enchanted Tail and a meeting was set up. Those who believe in the law of attraction will think nothing too extraordinary about the fact that Classics4Kids had an open slot in their 2019 season called Sing Me a Story. The marketing was already set in motion for the whole season but they had yet to find a good idea for Sing Me a Story. The rest is history.
Months of preparation by Bermudez, Robertson, Deering and Zimbric resulted in an Enchanted Tail opera score reduced for the Classics4Kids 16-piece orchestra, additional pieces for the San Diego Children’s Choir, original projected watercolor artwork by Melanie Moore, and updated costumes and set pieces. Thanks to a project grant from The Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, the performance came together like clockwork. In May 2019, The Enchanted Tail orchestral performance was premiered by Classics4Kids at the Balboa Theater for 5000 school children bussed in from 42 districts around San Diego.
“A big concern of Dana’s, I know, was if this intimate and interactive show would play well to a theater full of 1300 kids. We ran the production four times and each time the kids laughed at the right spots, called out at the right spots and were silent and attentive at the right spots. It just played beautifully,” Robertson said.
After such success with large and small audiences, Bermudez and Robertson knew they were ready. In August 2019 Opera4Kids received it’s Non Profit 501 (c)(3) status. The singing duo wanted a name to pay tribute to their great partnership with Classics4Kids. They look forward to taking The Enchanted Tail and future Opera4Kids productions to theaters across the USA. Charity and outreach are still a huge part of their mission and they have created music education curriculum, digital programming, and are continuing to perform at churches, synagogues, schools, museums, community centers, and children’s hospitals bringing the joy of opera to children’s open hearts.
To donate to Opera4Kids and help children enjoy classical masterpieces from opera in fun performances like The Enchanted Tail, please consider making a small or large contribution.
For Donations: https://donorbox.org/opera4kids
Our website is: www.Opera4Kids.com
More about The Enchanted Tail: www.EnchantedTail.com
