Shared Experiences: LINDSEY HENDRICKS

Seattle Opera's Experience Opera program introduces thousands of high school students to opera each year, through teacher training, specially created media and materials, in-class presentations and performances, and attendance at final dress rehearsals. Amelia creators Daron Hagen and Gardner McFall spent time at three Seattle-area high schools this April, teaching students about the creative process and about opera, and introducing their new work; and some 800 students from fourteen different schools got to see the show.

In each of Seattle Opera's partner schools, the teachers are the heroes who make it all work, introducing young people to this great art form. Everyone knows the power a teacher has to transform a young person's life, and the energy and creativity of our Experience Opera teachers knows no bounds. Today's Shared Experience on Amelia comes out of David Vinson's humanities class at Kennedy High School in Burien, where graduating senior Lindsey Hendricks crafted a moving response to the opera:

"This video is a response to an English class question, 'What moved you about the Opera Amelia?' The emotional extremes and the imagery within the opera struck me the most. A range of emotions are encompassed in the opera and video; happiness, sadness, anger, and finally happiness once again. By writing piano accompaniment and pairing it with images that represent those emotions, I created this video as my attempt to portray those different emotions that so inspired me from Amelia.
I do not own any of the images in the video."



Thanks, Linsdey, for sharing your project with us!

Photo of Experience Opera by Rozarii Lynch