Summary Opening Festival RB 1999 - 2000 Season Opera 1999 - 2000 Season Education / Outreach Ticket prices Public Access Studio Theatres ROH Strategic Plan

Repertory-related projects will include a programme of Study Days associated with the continuing series of BP Amoco Schools’ matinees, resource packs for schools and public exhibitions and displays relating to performances.

The long-running projects Chance to Dance, with its associated Dance Clubs, Monday Moves and Write an Opera continue, with Monday Moves classes returning to the Royal Opera House once it reopens and public performances by participants in all three projects planned for the Studio Theatre. The annual Behind the Scenes course in which young people can learn about all aspects of a career in the arts resumes over Easter 2000. The range of the course will be expanded, with a separate week aimed at pre-professional level singers, dancers and musicians. The long-running programme of introductory lecture-demonstrations for schools and workshops and small-scale performances in hospitals and hospices will also continue.

New projects planned for 1999–2000 include the launch of Blueprint 2000; a children’s opera in association with the String of Pearls Millennium Festival; the first educational conference for arts professionals to be held at the Royal Opera House; and a travelling exhibition programme.

Blueprint 2000 is the Royal Opera House’s major educational performance project for the Millennium. This will be a completely new type of long-term venture involving professional musicians, singers and dancers who will create a modular performance that incorporates work with young people within its structure.

The work will initially be commissioned from, and created by, ROH artists, with integral sections for performance by groups of non-professionals. Schools will participate in creative design, music, drama and dance workshops leading to performances in which some elements are performed by professionals, others by students, and others by both working together. The first performances will take place at the Royal Opera House during the 1999/2000 season and the piece will then be used as the basis of a series of future creative projects around the country.

The Royal Opera House’s contribution to the planned String of Pearls Millennium Festival will be a year-long project which will involve most schools in Wandsworth with the creation of a children’s opera to be performed in Battersea Park in June 2000. Royal Opera House artists and staff, working alongside teachers in all the schools, will lead the project.

The Royal Opera House will host its first international conference for arts education practitioners in March 2000. This will include the annual meeting of the European Network of Education Departments in Opera Houses (Réseau Européan des Services Éducatifs).

A travelling exhibition programme is planned to be available to libraries, higher education establishments and museums. A range of different topics is planned, ranging from aspects of the lives and work of professional singers, dancers and musicians, the artistic work of the Royal Opera House and its companies and the craft skills that are used in the creation of opera and ballet productions.