![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “This bicycle,” it begins, in a fit of preschool pique, “is such a poo-poo vehicle.” The Queen’s aria? That’s still about anger, but it now invokes something far worse than the vengeance of hell. “La donna è mobile”? That’s about how milk squirts out your nose if you happen to laugh at exactly the wrong time. Listen closely, and you’ll find that the singer should have shared her cotton candy with her friends, and absolutely will … tomorrow. See, you might think that Carmen is relating her views on love, but no. The other ones: the words, at least, as they are now known to my 6-year-old daughter and the hundreds of children who took grown-ups like me to the Kennedy Center here recently for the premiere of “The Ice Cream Truck Is Broken! & Other Emotional Arias,” an experiment, including a short new work by the composer Carlos Simon, in what it might mean to draw a very young and impossibly demanding audience into a life in opera. WASHINGTON - Do you know the words to the Queen of the Night’s stratospheric showcase from “The Magic Flute”? Maybe the Duke’s famous tune from “Rigoletto”? Carmen’s Habanera? ![]()
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