LONDON — Two-year-old Emily is already on her way to a lifetime love of Opera. She particularly likes the hopping. Welcome to London’s Royal Opera House, where Opera Dots, a workshop for toddlers, aims to build a future fan base, one hop at a time. Beneath an elegant iron-and-glass ceiling, a group of young guests giggle on a multicolored play mat as they mimic a costumed performer singing and dancing her way through ‘Hansel and Gretel’. Some of the children do boisterous impressions of a scary witch, luring the innocent pair into her house of sweets. According to its annual reports, attendance at the Royal Opera House has fallen by 137,000 since 2013. The opera aims to turn the tide, by making the art more accessible to young people — even very young people. The course begins with babies as young as three months, and goes up to five years old. Early childhood music specialist Nicola Burke, who helped to create the course, said “it’s about time” opera was opened up to very small fans. “All people can engage in opera,” she said. While the course is fun (and there is plenty of hopping), the opera is for real: “to ensure that that authentic art form is offered, and right from the beginning really,” she said. — Reuters