Covent Garden is renowned the world over as one of opera’s most hallowed halls. Now, in a bid to cultivate a new generation of opera lovers, The Royal Opera House in London has announced that for the first time it will be commissioning a new work for its main stage especially aimed at children as young as two. While the Royal Opera have supported new work for children at their studio venue, The Linbury Theatre, such as The Firework Maker’s Daughter by Davie Bruce and How the Whale Became by Julian Philips, it has never commissioned a new childrens work for its mainstage, neither has it ever aimed to make opera appeal to children so young.

The toddler-friendly production, Dot, Squiggle, Rest is a co-production with London’s Polka Theatre and is aimed at small children up to the age of five. The piece, which will premiere in June 2015, will be written by the Royal Opera’s former Composer-in-Residence Elspeth Brooke and will feature a dynamic mix of opera, dance and puppetry intended to capture the imaginations of Covent Garden’s youngest ever audience.

In addition to the staples such as John Copley’s popular staging of Puccini’s La Bohème, which will please Covent Garden’s...