SCOTTISH Opera has just unveiled KidO, its brand-new opera for three to four-year-olds.

The story of an extremely tidy man suddenly finding himself having to share with a very messy bird opened in Glasgow last week and tours Scotland for the next fortnight. The show involves a fair amount of singing, percussion and joining in.

This is the third opera for the very young that Scottish Opera has created. It follows on from the company’s hugely popular BabyO and SensoryO shows for babies and toddlers.

The show features singers Frances Morrison-Allen and Andrew McTaggart as the bird and the man, and percussionist Stuart Semple as a sort of golden, noisy mediator. The 45-minute show is directed by the award-winning Lu Kemp.

WHAT’S THE BACKGROUND?

OPERA tends not to be seen as the most accessible of artforms. They rarely come in at less than three hours, they’re generally sung in a foreign language and they tend not to have a single plot when three of four can do. Then there’s the class thing. Opera is still seen as elitist, high-end culture for the privileged.

It does not seem like an artform that can be easily adapted for toddlers.

WHAT’S IT LIKE FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN?

AS soon as KidO started, my child started bawling. Not just a little – there was a lot of crying. All the other children at Cottiers on Friday were happy and content. But Eve, my three-and-a-half-year-old was not, almost to the point where her crying was starting to affect the happiness of the other children around her.

The children were all sitting with their feet in the “magic square” on the stage. I had to crawl on to the magic square, in front of an audience full of parents whose children weren’t crying, to try to pick up and comfort my child.

The thought of having to deal with a miserable Eve, and also pay attention enough to KidO to be able to write about it, was, I’ll confess, a little stressful.

But as soon as I lifted her up and as soon as Andrew McTaggart came out and sang, Eve was entranced.

Only occasionally for the next 45 minutes would she turn away from the stage, and that was purely to tell me what was happening. The music, the costumes, the production and the performances had her hooked. And not just her. Just about all the children in the room sat completely and utterly engaged.

“It takes an awful lot of research and development,” says Jane Davidson, Scottish Opera’s Director of Education and Outreach, when I ask her how they came up with the show.

“The creative team guinea pig with a lot of volunteers, a lot of people bring their babies and their wee ones along and we try things out and see what works and what doesn’t.”

HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?

For Scottish Opera, the idea of putting on shows for young children was a logical step – the company was the first in Europe to have an education department. “Outreach is a hugely important part of our education strategy,” she says.

For Davidson, getting children in Scotland involved with the arts is about much more than finding something to fill their time: “There’s been so much work done on the cognitive benefits and the intellectual and emotional benefits of integration with the arts. The evidence is quite overwhelming.

“This is one of the things [Scotland] sells the most in the world. The work that we do internationally, of which we do a lot, is really all tied up with the pedagogy that we’ve developed over the years”.

Every year the company goes into schools across the country. Around 10,000 children take part in their activities, as well as a number of adult learners.

The shows must be a challenge for the performers who take part. Even the rowdiest of opera crowds are not likely to stand up and walk about or ask questions, cry or wet themselves.

At the end of the KidO show, the three performers all seem genuinely touched by the response of the children. All the toddlers are invited to come on to the stage and play in the magic square. The performers come and say goodbye to every child in the audience.

Davidson says the company find the experience quite special: “I think the artists really enjoy that. When you watch someone learn something or discover something for the first time, it’s fascinating. In some ways it’s far more exciting than an audience who have seen the artform millions of times before.”

So successful have the previous projects been that they’ve been asked to tour them all over the UK and festivals in New Zealand and Abu Dhabi.

Eve probably is not yet ready for the Ring Cycle, but she has spent the last three days talking and laughing about KidO. That’s got to mean something.

WHERE IS IT ON?

Kid0 travels to Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre today and tomorrow before moving to The Beacon, Greenock, on Thursday and Friday, Eden Court in Inverness on April 1 and 2, Birnam Arts Centre in Dunkeld on April 3 and the Lochgelly Centre on April 4 and 5.