Customer Reviews

The Young Person's Guide to the Opera: With Music from the Great Operas (Book & CD)

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Want to learn a little about a lot of opera? If not you, perhaps your kids? This is a excellent way to better know the world's most famous operas, with a CD highlighting the great music.

As an Emotional Intelligence instructor (EQ) and coach, I habitually find adults whose emotional life was nourished in an intelligent way when they were kids. My <a href=http://www.susandunn.cc/courses.htm>adult learning course</A>, and the one I use to train other coaches, includes the arts, particularly music, as we know that it effects the emotions, and supports the immune system. I purchased this book in the hopes of including it on my online store of EQ products and have been very pleased with it. I also recommend it in my <a href=http://www.susandunn.cc/vivoperlei.htm>Club Vivo Per Lei/I Live for Music</A>. For adults who are emotionally mature enough not to "mind" learning in a delightful and easy way, why not start with a book and recording like this and then move on to The Teaching Company. Opera is an acquired taste because we aren't brought up on it, just as classical music seems to have slipped away in recent decades, but is coming back in a big way. Why? Because we need it. For all the reason we intuitively know. It soothes the savage beast. I took my 8 year old friend to her first opera the other day - The Barber of Seville is a great starter. She laughed ... I laughed ... and that opera is very old. This is a great book for Christmas giving and I recommend it highly. Then take your little one to Barber of Seville and spend the money to get seats right up front. (Very important, the immediacy of it.) Put your "arts" budget for the kids right after food, clothing, shelter and education (agitate for music appreciation in your schools, and I don't mean rap), and you'll have an emotionally intelligent child, which won't over-ride IQ, but without it, IQ isn't much good! Ask Turandot, wink wink. She had to "learn" his name was Love, and he taught her with a kidd, not his intellect.