Another Year, Another Silly First Grade Opera!

Actually, another three first grade operas at the Brooklyn Children’s School, created, written, composed and performed by first graders themselves, under the direction of their teachers and their teaching artist Mister Danny.

The process started in October when three first grade classes each chose their opera themes: Halloween, You Tube, and Silliness.  After several months of creating characters and story outlines and lyrics and music and dialog, and rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing, this Monday class 1-3 performed the tale of Dark Magic turning Halloween decorations alive; and this Tuesday 1-1 performed a nearly through-composed opera about You Tube videos gone wrong; and this morning class 1-2 performs the very silly story of aliens riding a poor sap’s head, which I will now share here:

The opera begins with our space aliens Boogle and Dooey flying through space towards planet Earth:

You can listen to the piano play the chorus of the song (“Errr Errr We are riding on a space ship…”) via this quick and low-tech recording I made with my phone:

1-2’s space ship

These space aliens are out for a good time, which means riding people’s heads:

This song’s main musical motif (“I like to ride on people’s heads – yeah yeah I like to ride…”) is played on this track:

Meanwhile, on Earth, Charlie decides to buy his friend Alex a pet dog.  They go to the pet store and pick out a dog.

The aliens decide Alex has the head they want to ride.  Dooey uses his space ship controls to zap Boogle on top of Alex’s head.

This causes Alex some consternation:

This song’s melody is repeated three times, rising higher with each repeat:

Alex feels like “maybe it’s a bird, having a dance party on my head, and I wasn’t even invited”.  When she looks in the mirror she sees what looks to her like an “angry tornado”.  Charlie deduces it’s an alien, but gets zapped by a force field whenever he tries to knock it off Alex’s head.

In desperation Alex runs into a car wash to get rid of the alien:

The piano is playing the song’s intro: “I’m running through a car wash …”

Alex is getting covered in water and soap, but Boogle is protected by the force field and loves the wipers and washers of the car wash.  Alex’s attempt to wash off the alien has backfired spectacularly.

Meanwhile Charlie and the dog have caught up with Alex in the car wash.  The dog leaps up on Alex and slobbers all over her.

The piano is playing the dog’s woof woof woofs and slobber slobber slobbers:

The dog slobber disrupts the aliens’ force field.  Boogle is no longer protected.  Dooey quickly zaps Boogle off of Alex’s head and back into the space ship.  They decide to leave planet Earth.

Alex rejoices in the aliens being gone and thanks her dog for saving her with his slobber.

And while Charlie vacuums all the dog slobber off of Alex, she decides to name the dog Buster, because he busted the aliens’ controls:

The beginning (and ending) of the song (I’ll call you Buster … You saved me from the alien.”) is played here:

Applause after the show and the principal’s speech