Why bugs?
Bugs are everywhere: crawling, flying, and swimming. Little lives teem around us. But who are they? Take a closer look.

Look at the tiny caterpillar, just emerging from an egg. Driven by a voracious appetite, that caterpillar will grow to 4,000 times its original size in the span of a few weeks. Imagine an adult female mosquito, using infra-red vision and carbon dioxide sensors to track down prey millions of times her size.

Insects’ lives are the stuff of myth: complete metamorphosis (gluttonous worm becomes winged beauty), feats of strength (dung beetles build and transport balls many times their own weight), and acts of astonishing ingenuity (spiders spin threads of sticky elastic and weave them into webs to trap their prey). Nature is stranger than fiction and insects are miniature superheroes. Their lives are filled with passion and danger, the very lifeblood of opera.

Why kids?
Kids are curious; the world is opening up around them every day. Childhood is a time of openness, when the habits and passions of a lifetime are just being formed. Kids adapt to their environments. If that environment embraces insects from an early age, if it includes opera, then it’s likely that it always will. The time to reach the audiences of tomorrow is today.

Like all of us, kids hunger for a good story. Give them a tale they care about and they won’t ask if opera is a viable medium for pre-teens, or if the lives of insects are a fitting subject for the opera house. They’ll ask, “What did Caterpillar do then?”

Why opera?
Opera is a magnifying glass, amplifying the stories it tells. Opera is huge and colorful. Opera is high drama: love, death, and danger. Opera is story-telling. In a world dominated by film and television, where live performance is relatively rare, opera is a uniquely powerful medium. Music, words, acting, dancing, humor, and stagecraft all come together to tell stories of unforgettable intensity.

Why The Bug Opera?
Bugs are the stuff of legend, every insect is a story book; kids are hungry for stories; and opera is the ultimate story-telling medium. What could be more natural than an opera for kids about bugs? Inspired by the wit of Tom Lehrer, the rhythms of Leonard Bernstein, and the grandeur of the operatic tradition, The Bug Opera brings minute characters and young audience members together through the magnifying glass of opera.