Bravo

Monday, my wee one performed in an Opera, Mystery on the Docks, performed in three acts. He was a rat.

Actually, all the performers were rats, mine was just the cutest (granted, my opinion is slightly biased). Our city's local opera company has a small educational program and through a grant, Little Clover's school was able to schedule a performance during the day. His music teacher was given two weeks to find performers and rehearse and she did a fantastic job. Roughly 20 kids from the third and fourth grades were selected to perform and Little Clover was given the chance to be on stage.

All of the children worked very hard to be in the Opera. They gave up a week of recess to rehearse the songs and the music. When the time came to perform, they were eager and excited to finally meet the grown-up Opera singers. Then, they performed for grades 1-5, who were an excellent audience. The children watched attentively and the story was quickly drawing them in. Of course, the Opera timed the breaks between acts at the most suspenseful moments, gasps from the children.

At the end, the cast came out for a curtain call while cries of "Bravo!" accompanied the applause. Little Clover beamed and the assistant principal told us we had a budding actor on our hands.

This was huge for Italian and I.

You see, our relationship began around theater. Italian was the technical director for our college theater. I thought he was cute so I joined the theater club. We spent our entire college career performing in plays, playing musical instruments, singing, and taking painting classes. When Little Clover was born, we naturally anticipated having an artsy child. Image our shock when we discovered he had unbelievable athletic ability. We tossed away thoughts of plays and music and plunged into baseball, soccer, and basketball practices. He is great at all things involving a ball and he is fun to watch.

Then, this year, he discovered he had talents in other things. It began with a lead angel part in the school Christmas play, then he began to plink out songs on the piano more and more and is now strumming a guitar. Who knows, maybe he's more of a Renaissance Man than anything else.

In case you are wondering, there is knitting in this post. I knitted the tail for Little Clover's costume using some Fun Fur from my stash and knitting an I-Cord around a couple of pipe cleaners.