Friday, February 7, 2014

it isn't over till the fat lady sings

This was one of the idioms I taught my ESL class last week, in preparation for our field trip to the Edmonton Opera's performance of Die Fledermaus ("The Bat") on Thursday. 

For each of their performances, the opera company offers reduced-price tickets to the education dress rehearsal, so we took advantage of this great deal. The performance was at 11 a.m., which was perfect for our class. We met at the normal time and took the LRT over to the Health Sciences station. From there we walked the short distance to Jubilee Auditorium. We were early, so we found a place to sit and had some conversation time before going to our seats. We had terrace seats, which were fantastic, and everyone in our group thoroughly enjoyed the performance. It was sung in English, with subtitling, so it was an excellent opportunity for an ESL class. 

In preparation for the opera, not only did I teach the students about the fat lady singing, but we read a summary of the story and watched a couple of short video clips of performances by other opera companies. The students found the story a little confusing to read (no wonder, it IS confusing, even for a native speaker!)but once they saw it on stage, they quickly caught on. There was plenty of laughter all around, and the whole outing was a huge success. 

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