unique ONLINE COLLABORATION invites everyone to take a look inside opera …
Seven of the UK’s opera companies have joined forces to produce Inside Opera: Live, a unique online event offering unprecedented behind the scenes access and insight into the opera being created and performed in theatres across the country.
In a collaboration, the scope of which is a first for the arts, the Companies – English National Opera, English Touring Opera, Northern Ireland Opera, Opera North, The Royal Opera, Scottish Opera, and Welsh National Opera – will come together on Saturday 10May 2014 as part of a Europe-wide celebration of opera.
Designed for anyone who is new to opera, but with obvious appeal for opera fans, this ambitious event will be hosted on YouTube. It combines live streamed and filmed footage to give viewers a chance to experience opera across the UK from the inside, and encourages them to find out about the opera activity on their doorstep.
Inside Opera: Live will be presented by Kirsten O’Brien from the Grand Theatre in Leeds, as Opera North prepares for matinee and evening performances of Puccini’s La bohème. The four hour online event will air specially commissioned behind the scenes films from all the participating companies, live interviews with singers and directors, and live links to rehearsals, backstage and community-based activities. In the course of a packed afternoon, viewers will have the chance to hear from performers just before they go on stage; find out how a singer prepares for a new role; meet the people behind an opera production and learn what they do; see what it takes to make and take an opera out on tour; and understand the skill that goes into making a period costume.
Throughout the event there will also be the opportunity using #insideopera to put questions live via Twitter to the companies’ artistic directors, and composer Errollyn Wallen will be taking real time tweets from audience members and making them into a brand new aria to be performed at the end of the day.
Opera productions on stage in the UK on European Opera Days weekend include some of the best loved works in the repertoire, such as Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro andThe Magic Flute, Puccini’s Tosca, La bohème and Madama Butterfly, and Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier.