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Sparking Imaginations!
Opera Ignite strives to educate individuals of all ages through angagement in music, drama and movement. Since its creation in 2005, Opera Ignite has reached thousands of children, teachers and adult audiences through peformances, classroom workshops and professional development experiences for educators. Founding Director, Christina Farrell, unites her background as a teacher and performer to create learning experiences that are entertaining and rich with possibilities for exploration and discovery. The company was originally named Greensburg American Opera, but the name was changed in 2009 to Opera Ignite to reflect the broad geographic reach of the organziation's programs. We have been privileged to collaborate with many outstanding organizations including, Gateway to the Arts, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Three Rivers Arts Festival, The Frick Museum, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra, The Point Chamber Orchestra, Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestra, I ragazzi della lirica of Chianciano, Italy, Westland Academy for the Arts and Studio Cappezuti.
Christina Farrell is the Founding Director of Opera Ignite and a nationally recognized Teaching Artist. Through Opera Ignite's educational initiatives, she has conducted classroom residencies, professional development for teachers and audience engagement workshops in collaboration with Gateway to the Arts Aesthetic Education Institute, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, The Frick Museum, Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. She is on the National Roster of Master Teaching Artists with the Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning in the Arts, for whom she conducts professional development workshops across the country. She is the Educational Director for Prime Stage Theatre which promotes literacy skills to adolescent readers through theater-based experiences. Her professional development workshops have been featured at various Pennsylvania Music Educators Association conferences, the 2010 Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children Conference and the 2011 Conference on Eugene O’Neill in association with New York University. She was chosen as the 2007 Gateway to the Arts Hardie Artist of the Year in recognition of her outstanding commitment to arts education and is a proud recipient of the 2011 Fred Rogers Memorial Scholarship. Christina received her BFA in Vocal Performance from Carnegie Mellon University and is a MA candidate in Educational Theatre at New York University (completion 2012.) She has performed with Washington National Opera, Baltimore’s Opera Vivente, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra and at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as a Finalist with the National Symphony Orchestra’s Young Soloists’ Competition. She has served on the voice faculties of The Peabody Preparatory in Baltimore and The Levine School of Music in Washington, D.C., and taught six years as a middle school music teacher.
Whether as a performer, teacher or director, she hopes to share her own passion of the arts and foster the same enthusiasm in others. |
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