Don Giovanni Goes to Prison: Teaching Opera behind Bars

Abstract

Teaching opera in prison presents challenges, such as limits imposed on printed and recorded material to study it, or the audio-visual technology in the classroom space, yet, no other experience can be so inspiring and rewarding for everybody involved. This essay focuses on teaching opera, in particular Mozart’s Don Giovanni, to imprisoned students in America. It addresses pedagogical challenges on how to teach opera in prison and advocates for the need to leave the ivory tower of academia and engage in social action. If opera is still perceived as an elitist art form, it is because it is artificially kept that way by being practiced, taught, studied, and promoted only among an exclusive sector of our population.