Forget hip hop, rap and chart music - secondary school children are turning on to opera.

The sounds of Mozart, Stravinsky and Puccini have been ringing around the corridors and playgrounds of Hove Park School in Hangleton Way, Hove.

Pupils have been going mad for the music since the start of a lunchtime opera club, which is always packed.

Last week 50 of them travelled to the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden to see a production for the first time.

Ever since, staff have struggled to stem the singing around school.

The craze is all down to English teacher John Flanagan, a former principal performer at Glyndebourne, who has been sharing his love of music with the children.

Teaching assistant Sue Corcoran, who works on the school's programme for gifted and talented children and has helped to run the opera club, said: "His enthusiasm is totally contagious. We could have taken coachfuls of pupils to Covent Garden because of the enthusiasm he has drawn up among the children."

Mr Flanagan, from Lewes, starred in a number of performances during the 1970s and 1980s, and travelled in England and Italy with various opera companies.

Among his roles were Truelove in The Rake's Progress, the parson in The Cunning Little Vixen and Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream.

He joined Hove Park as a teacher four years ago.

The Covent Garden trip to see Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin was the second he had organised for Hove Park pupils. As the performance was in Russian, Mr Flanagan set up a series of workshops where pupils could find out the story of the opera and what to expect.

At the end of each session he sang some of the pieces himself.

Mrs Corcoran said: "He even produced a handbook guide for them but when it came to the production they knew it so well already they did not need it."

There are now rumours the school may stage its own opera.

Mr Flanagan said: "The children thought the production was wonderful, which it was. The singing was wonderful.

I hope it has inspired some of them to enjoy opera in their lives."

The trip was the latest of a series of musical initiatives at the school, which had a visit from jazz star Abram Wilson last week.

Mrs Corcoran said: "This is one of many ways we try to broaden the kids' horizons."

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