America’s next bambino caro?

william osborne says:

We see from this video that opera could be for everybody, but when I listen to this dear little girl the issue isn’t that she has a great instrument or that she lacks training and maturity. It’s the extraordinary loss of human potential created by America’s ghettos. This girl is lucky that she goes to a fairly decent middle school in Upper Darbry – which borders on the horrific ghettos of West Philadelphia. Her fate could be vastly worse in a city where 60,000 children live in deep poverty and face unspeakable living conditions including daily problems with hunger.

When I lived in West Philadelphia in the mid 70s I would sometimes listen to the choirs in black churches or hear kids singing at events in a ghetto park near where I lived. The talent and musicality were often breath-taking. There is so much musical genius being lost by these kids not having reasonable opportunities to grow.

I substitute taught in Philly’s ghetto schools. The conditions were so bad they changed my life forever. Here is a 6 minute video from ABC News, almost 40 years later, that shows what life is like in one of these Philadelphia schools, and that little has changed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9gT_Nc41s4

Here is a compilation of photos of America’s ghettos taken from Google Maps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ool0dVCK4YY