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Opera North's vocal coach Marie Claire Breen has been working with some of them for months.

Emphatically rejecting the claim that the art form is elitist, Marie Claire told me that the children were made aware that "opera doesn't have to just be about the stereotypical big, huge voices on big, big, stages, but that we're telling a story with their words, with their emotions, with experience".

Times staff writers Lauren Ng and Karla Marie Sanford contributed to this report.

Staff writer Karla Marie Sanford contributed to this article.

Two French antiques experts have been convicted of forging historic chairs that they claimed had once belonged to French royals such as Marie Antoinette.