Opera is the domain of adults? Certainly not at Buchanan Park Public School.

Since 1995, the Buchanan Park Opera Club has had a tradition of featuring elementary school students in productions of La Boheme, Carmen, Romeo and Juliette, Don Giovanni, and others.

That tradition continues Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 7 p.m., when the BPOC presents Mozart's The Magic Flute at Buchanan Park School, 30 Laurier Ave.

Of course, this production, like previous BPOC productions, will be scaled back from the original to accommodate children's participation. The Magic Flute won't be performed in the original German but in English to piano accompaniment as well as with kids playing Orff instruments. Choruses have been abridged. Vocal passages have been simplified and transposed. After all, you don't think they've got a 12-year-old lad who's going to sing Sarastro's deep, low F or a young gal who's going to shriek out the Queen of the Night's super high F, do you? And instead of a three-hour Singspiel, (there'll be spoken dialogue as well as singing), the whole show will take about 90 minutes with no intermission.

"Once you're in, we don't let you out," joked Dawn Martens, the school's JK through Grade 6 music teacher who is spearheading the production along with David Fawcett, a Grade 4 classroom teacher at Buchanan.

"We believe that teaching kids in music involves teaching them the best, and you don't get much better than Verdi, Mozart, Puccini, etc.," explained Martens. "Opera is so much fun because it incorporates so many things. It's drama. It's music. It's art. Opera is the ultimate sensory experience in the arts."

That ultimate sensory experience will involve close to 200 of the school's grades 1 through 6 students, whether as lead singers or choristers, players in the Orff ensemble, dancers or techies helping with sound and lights.

Anyone who's worked on school musical productions will know of the immense time commitment, not to mention community support, teachers and parents included, necessary to pull off an exciting kids' show. That's no different with the BPOC.

"Hours wise, it's huge," said Martens of her work on Flute. "I also have an absolutely fantastic team of parents and teachers that take hours and hours. It's unbelievable what they put into it. It's really a community event."

What is also unbelievable is that Martens has no budget from the school or the board with which to stage this community event. Instead, she raises money through sponsors, some fundraisers and in-kind sponsors.

All of the BPOC's proceeds go to children's cancer research at Hamilton Health Sciences McMaster Children's Hospital.

"Everybody knows someone who has been touched by it (cancer)," said Martens. "With Mac being a teaching hospital, we've been allowed to go down and actually meet children who are in chemotherapy, and actually see the facilities, and things like that. So, it's very tangible. They can go and see what their money is going toward."

And the small fry at the BPOC have given big time, raising approximately $30,000 since 1997.

Tickets for The Magic Flute are $4. Call the school at 905-387-5212.

Leonard Turnevicius writes on classical music for The Spectator.

leonardturnevicius@hotmail.com