Immersive Opera: Accelerating Operatic Innovation through Industry Co-operation

Opera is a powerful and emotionally compelling artform and still a significant driver of cultural prestige, but with younger audiences becoming increasingly rare and unmotivated it is a sector facing significant challenges of relevance, accessibility, and financial sustainability. To ensure opera remains relevant to a wide and diverse audience, the industry needs to embrace innovative approaches to storytelling, audience engagement and developing technologies, and develop research at the vanguard of cutting-edge artistic experiences, in line with findings from AHRC's Boundless Creativity initiative to activate innovation-led development in the cultural sector. Whilst UK theatre companies have wholeheartedly embraced immersive practices these are still rare in opera, which is an industry that is historically slow to adapt to innovation and in which companies working alone and in competition lack the resources and finances effectively to develop and test new strategies for performance.

In this fellowship, I will develop and promote immersive performance practices (site-specific, non-linear, and interactive/participatory storytelling practices) and technologies (spatial audio, audio-mapping, visual and haptic XR interfaces, etc.) as a solution to this problem. By systematically researching the application of storytelling techniques and technologies from the theatre and gaming industries in opera, the project seeks to create accessible, dynamic, and subversive forms of opera in a critical, collaborative and longitudinal way that would not be viable in a commercial setting. The development of these practices will address a significant gap in the research, where a paucity of literature exists around immersive practices in opera. Additionally, empirical mixed methods testing of these techniques will gain deep understandings of audience behaviours that will be invaluable in evidencing these approaches to funders and other stakeholders.

By providing a prominent platform and credibility, the fellowship will help me combine and maximise the different elements of my profile catalyse industry intervention at a much more impactful level than I would otherwise be able to achieve. The proposed programme of work will also mobilise partnerships with six leading opera companies from around the UK, including the Royal Opera, English National Opera, Scottish Opera, Opera North, the British Youth Opera and National Opera Studio, to facilitate an unprecedented cross-sector collaboration that transcends opera's competition structures. This programme therefore offers a clear path to developing the knowledge and networks needed to accelerate and empower a culture of innovation in the UK opera community and will establish me as the sector champion needed to incite this change, based in an institution with the necessary technological capability (not to mention neutral, brokering position) to set it in motion.