Although opera reflects exciting and always relevant themes, young people often find it difficult to connect with this genre, partly because the content and actions seem unrealistic to them. To facilitate entry into this form of music theater and to make the actions and musical language understandable, "Opera in a Nutshell" offers compact teaching materials oriented towards the lives of young people for 17 works: graphics depicting the dramatic character constellations and plot moments, worksheets with graphics and tasks, content descriptions of the works, German and original language text sheets, all provided as photocopy templates. Additionally, there are teaching modules with key statements for each drama, teacher prompts related to the graphic sections, suggestions for audio examples, and brief expectation horizons, as well as PowerPoint presentations for projection.