Education

HOC

Riverview Opera Project The Riverview Opera Project, created by psychiatrist/composer Dr. David Sasso and composer Deborah Teason is an interactive, health-promoting, and innovative arts experience for Connecticut’s most at-risk and underserved youth. Through workshops led by professional musicians and songwriters, children and adolescents at Riverview Hospital, Connecticut’s only state-funded psychiatric hospital for youth, successfully created, produced, and performed four original operas. The response - from peers and family in the audience to hospital staff and administration - was unanimously enthusiastic. Most importantly, the youths gained a sense of mastery, learned to work with one another, created original and beautiful works of art, were able to freely express themselves through art, and tasted the success of creative group expression and task accomplishment.

In Spring and Summer 2011, the project partnered with Hillhouse Opera Company to produce three more operas written by children. The Riverview Opera Project and HOC are already receiving support from the CT Mental Health Center (CMHC) Foundation, but we still remain short of our goal to fund future opera projects. Please consider supporting this wonderful effort to engage youth with so few resources and so many challenges in an experience that may well change their lives. If you would like to donate, please visit HOC's Donate page and indicate that you would like the money to go toward the Riverview Opera Project.

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