Many young hands make Opera's light work

Photo / Dean Purcell

It's been fiddly work for the youngsters, but their hard work has paid off shimmeringly.

Seven-year-old Eleanor Fihaki (from left), Tom Yelverton, 9, Shalom Viliamu, 8, Emily Power, 9, and around 30 of their friends from Onehunga Primary School have been threading thousands of glass beads to make a glittering chandelier.

The students put in about 30 hours of work to thread up to 52,000 glass beads.

It will be used as part of the set of an upcoming production of the New Zealand Opera, called Eugene Onegin, which begins in Auckland on September 17.