‘Does High-Definition mean High Noon for Opera Houses?’
Another interesting article weighing in to the highly debated and very topical topic of opera screening in cinemas.
Category Archives: Topical
Rough for Opera
http://roughforopera.tumblr.com/
Rough for Opera present a scratch night at The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone. Three short performances and discussion with those directly involved in creating new opera…sounds like a great evening I wish I wasn’t out of London on Monday!
Igor at The Spectator thinks opera tickets are too cheap…
Igor at The Spectator thinks opera tickets are too cheap…
So apparently opera tickets are too cheap, the argument seemingly being that the ROH should know it’s worth and value itself higher. Yes Premier league football tickets are also ridiculously expensive too, and I personally enjoy watching Barnet in the lower leagues and having a bacon butty for under twenty quid. I also value the option of cheap opera tickets being available. When I am much older and hopefully rich enough to pay top whack to sit with my mates centre stalls I will. But, I will only do so because my love of opera and desire attend has built up from a young age, largely due to the fact that cheap ticket prices for students and younger people have been available to me. The first opera I ever saw was Janacek’s The Adventures of Mr Broucek, and this was largely due to an opera society member selling £10 tickets to sit in the stalls at Opera North during my first week at university. I have never looked back, and I managed to get lots of sceptical people through the doors to see a opera for the first time because they didn’t have invest a lot of money in having a go. Sure the opera may be worth a large ticket price just as the FA are sure their league games are worth the money, and if I want to treat myself or someone I will pay it. However, there is so much out there I want to see so I will sit in cheaper seats and look for as many deals as possible to get to as many shows as possible, without feeling ashamed at doing so.
Pappano pledges future to Royal Opera House
Pappano pledges future to Royal Opera House
http://sinfinimusic.com/uk/features/news/pappano-renews-his-roh-contract
‘Music director Antonio Pappano’s relationship with the Royal Opera House will continue until at least 2017…’
ROH announce the 14/15 season
ROH announce the 14/15 season.
http://www.roh.org.uk/news/opera-and-music-201415
Some exciting productions coming up! Anna Nicole is back with the title role being revised by Eva-Maria Westbroek, despite I believe her saying she didn’t want to do it again…
A number of classics revised and some new productions, but what I’m most excited about is the new opera on show.
‘The Trial (Linbury Studio Theatre) Philip Glass, one of the world’s most popular contemporary composers, creates a new work for Music Theatre Wales based on Kafka’s nightmarish novel.’ 10 | 11 | 14 | 15 | 17 October at 7.45pm; 18 October at 6pm
‘Glare (Linbury Studio Theatre) Danish-German composer Søren Nils Eichberg presents his much-anticipated operatic debut, a taut thriller about trust and reality.’ November
‘Swanhunter (Linbury Studio Theatre) In a new co-production, Opera North and The Wrong Crowd present Jonathan Dove’s family opera, with a beguiling blend of evocative music, stunning puppetry and visual storytelling.’ 4–11 April
‘The Virtues of Things (Linbury Studio Theatre) Rising stars Matt Rogers and Sally O’Reilly present a new opera as part of the annual collaboration between The Royal Opera, Opera North and Aldeburgh Music.’ May
‘King Size (Linbury Studio Theatre) A somnolent couple in a huge hotel bedroom sing songs ranging from Purcell to pop, in Christoph Marthaler’s acclaimed reimagining of the Liederabend (‘evening of song’).’ June
‘The Cure/ The Corridor (Linbury Studio Theatre)The Royal Opera celebrates the work of Harrison Birtwistle with a double programme featuring one world premiere and Birtwistle’s acclaimed 2009 chamber opera.’ June
‘Dot, Squiggle and Rest (Clore Studio Upstairs) The award-winning Polka Theatre presents their first children’s opera, in collaboration with The Royal Opera’s former Composer in Residence, Elspeth Brooke.’ June
‘Peter Pan Welsh National Opera presents Richard Ayres and Lavinia Greenlaw’s new family opera adapted from J.M. Barrie’s beloved fairytale.’ 24 | 25 July at 7.30pm
also exciting….
‘Listen to the Silence- A Journey with John Cage (Linbury Studio Theatre) Explore the mind-bending world of philosopher composer John Cage in Zonzo Compagnie’s award-winning interactive family show.’
‘Rise and Fall of the city of Mahagonney John Fulljames presents a new production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s furiously impassioned satire on consumerism.’
‘Mad boy clever girl (double bill) (Linbury Studio Theatre) Birmingham Contemporary Music Group performs two chamber works by leading British composer David Sawer, brought together as the composer intended for the first time.’
Not sure I will be able to make to all of them, but I’m sure its better to be overwhelmed with options rather than struggling to find a something in a schedule to excite me! Whatever it could be a costly year, so lets just hope there’s some cracking ticket deals coming up.
Digital Opera: A Manifesto
Digital Opera: A Manifesto
A new genre of opera is emerging from our digital culture. It has a new way of telling its stories and is poised to acquire a new audience. It may be deliberately named ‘digital opera’ to describe an explosive encounter between new technologies and the long-established art-form of opera. The fruits of this collision are unpredictable.
Digital Opera transforms the way in which operatic works are produced and consumed. Audiences are engaged in active participation, and the roles of the other collaborators in a production are changed. The operatic experience becomes intermedial, and networked, often asynchronous and immersive in a way which does not rely on a proscenium arch – or any traditional theatrical setting – but is closer to the user experience of reading or gaming. The voice is always present, but may be real or simulated and, together with the media themselves, provides new opportunities for the ‘vehicle of narrative’.
Digital operas are works that are intrinsically digital from conception to finished outcome. Digital broadcasts of traditional operas are not included in this definition, nor are operatic stagings that employ digital means of production for purely scenographic purposes. Only works that are conceived in digital terms, engage with these new means and their new meanings, and clearly emerge from digital culture should be described as ‘digital opera’.
This definition would include many works that currently do not call themselves ‘digital opera’, but also omits some works that already use that label. In fact, the number of works that call themselves digital opera and fit these criteria is currently rather small, but we believe that this new form is about to grow rapidly and could achieve both the mass appeal and high production values that characterise the best opera of past centuries.
Digital opera affords new user experiences involving immersion and two-way creativity. It is a non-fixed entity that changes with interaction. It is therefore built on a networked model and may actually exist in the network. It is inherently asynchronous, yet retains the sense of occasion and heightened experience of traditional opera. It does this by finding new ways to engage the co-existent and multi-located audience either as performer or participant.
Digital opera has transcultural, global potential and will fast develop new economic and business models for its dissemination. The creators of digital opera possess a set of skills that would be mostly unrecognisable in traditional opera houses. Yet they share the same or similar concerns of music, narrative, mise-en-scène, dramaturgy, theatre, and so on. The emergence of this new opera has necessitated the refocusing of these concepts.
Simon Emmerson, Andrew Hugill, Weiwei Jin, Martin Rieser, Janet Ritterman, Lee Scott, Áine Sheil, Craig Vear, Frederic Wake-Walker
August, 2013
Will children ever care about opera?
Will children ever care about opera?
Unlike the The Telegraph’s Rupert Christiansen, I would like to think a little more positively about the impact ENO’s Opera Squad could be having on the children they reach. I am a great believer that education at an early age is the right way to go about incorporating opera in to more people’s lives and finding new relevance in the operatic form. No not every child is ever going to care about opera, just as not every child cares about Britain’s Got Talent. I happen to like both. Growing up I was lucky enough to have exposure to both. What is certain is children aren’t going to care about something they can’t connect with. So anyone out their, like Opera Squad, taking an art form to people who wouldn’t usually get the chance to engage with it- keep up the good work.
The use of video projection in opera and ballet- what do we think?
Handel’s London
Entrepreneurialism, celebrity, scandal, extravagance and risk-taking and are all words that could immediately be associated with London and its cultural scene today. However, they’re also equally relevant to the London of the early eighteenth century, which provides the context for so much of Handel’s operatic career. Indeed, Handel’s London was a time of important social and cultural change, making possible a style and quality of opera and musical theatre that had not been seen in England for decades….
Read the full article at http://www.eno.org/news/handels-london
Why do we sing in English?
John McMurray, ENO’s Head of Casting, explains the benefits of singing in our native language.
operacompass 