“The only thing that could have made it better would have been it going on forever“
How we made The Little Black Cat | Bringing The Little Black Cat to life | Gallery
Watch the whole opera
From November 2021 – February 2022 we worked with 20 young people aged 11 – 19 to create a brand new opera, The Little Black Cat. We performed at the Norwich Puppet Theatre on 18 June 2023 and in Cambridge and 25 June 2023. The project was a huge success. Our little opera is so beautiful and the performances had a huge impact on everybody who took part. Our audiences, ranging from young children to adults, loved every minute of the show.
This was a project of firsts for CYO:
- This was the first time we wrote a full opera from scratch with young people, which we then staged
- CYO went on tour for the first time, performing in Cambridge and Norwich
- We explored sound – a new area for us: the Feline Soundscape, that greeted the audience as they entered the venues and was and integral part of the terrifying Cat Mountain scenes, was created with special needs students from Chesterton Community College and a large mixed ability group of students from Downham Market Academy. All recording and sound engineering was carried out by our brilliant young team
- Puppetry was also new to us: the Norwich Puppet Theatre was an amazing new partner and the resulting mix of live singers and puppets was touching, funny and terrifying
How we made The Little Black Cat
“You gave me the courage to try things I might never otherwise have done. The Little Black Cat showed me that I could be a writer“
11 – 13 years
Our younger participants, some of whom had little formal music education created exciting cats choruses, progressing from experimenting with cat sounds and “translating” these into English, to creating visual scores.
As a final step, they composed melodies which are used in the choruses.
14 – 19 years
Older participants created the libretto and score for the opera, in a series of nine online workshops. This group included young people who were taking their first creative steps to more experienced musicians looking to develop their skills in composition, under the guidance of Russell Hepplewhite.
The Netherhall School
The Netherhall School, a large and diverse comprehensive in Cambridge, ran a two week English module in November 2021 for all Year 8s. Around 170 young people produced a mass of material which informed the project going forward. The school plans to run the module on an annual basis.
Bringing The Little Black Cat to life
“It was amazing to work on such a unique show. I made loads of friends and everyone involved was so friendly and open.”
Bringing the opera to life involved young singers, designers, stage managers, sound and lighting technicians, as well as students at our partner schools, Chesterton Community College and Downham Market Academy and young puppeteers from the Norwich Puppet Theatre.
The pictures in the gallery and the video below tell the story of all the fantastic work that went into the production. The young participants seized every opportunity on offer, exploring new ways of performing, making giant glittery cats’ eyes, interacting with puppets, setting up backstage and stage management, running lighting in two very different venues, recording our cat sound workshops at Chesterton Community College and Downham Market Academy and creating and playing a fabulous and terrifying soundtrack.
Our school partners gave us generous access, enabling us to run workshops with special needs students at Chesterton and a large mixed ability group at Downham Market. Our focus here was reaching those whose access to arts projects would normally be limited and who would benefit most from engaging with us.
The proof of the success of the opera shone through the engrossed faces of the children who attended and the rapturous applause that greeted every performance.
“My children were so excited by this show. They are still singing bits to each other in the bath days later!”
Gallery
Watch the whole opera
The project was supported by Arts Council England and the D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, with generous donations from Mills and Reeves, Bidwells Cambridge and private donors. The Little Black Cat graphic was created by CPL.
We are very grateful to Chesterton Community College who donate our rehearsal and workshop venues. Without them, Cambridge Youth Opera would struggle to exist.
Many thanks for this project to St Mary’s School for the loan of their minibus for transport to Norwich.
Cambridge Youth Opera 
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