"Come With Me", original filmed micro-opera
December 18, 2017 12:08 PM Subscribe
"Come With Me", original filmed micro-opera
"Come With Me" is a new opera written, composed, and filmed by me, and sung by me and a few friends (we're all professional singers) . The opera is micro in scale, at just over 12 minutes, but is packed with full-sized drama, passion, and singing. The concept behind composing and filming "Come With Me" to post on YouTube is to present opera in the same way as other contemporary music - short, sweet, and directly to your phone or computer.
"Come With Me" my attempt to modernize and personalize opera, through film and accessibility. There is no "performance" to attend. These singers aren't on a stage - they are walking around Jonathan's house. This audience isn't a hundred yards away - they are with the singers, observing the drama unfold from inside the room. That's the modernization that filming allows. Further setting this opera apart is the personalization - the ‘you’ in YouTube. This is no high-budget, all-star adaptation of La Boheme. This is a group of friends with a camera posting their creation to the internet. This is a sampling of the talent that is lying dormant around you. The cost and effort of realizing new, vibrant opera in a traditional format is prohibitive to any but the established composers and houses who can afford to take a bath on ticket revenue because they do not realize that people only come to concerts to hear music they already know, that when the only venue for new music is live performance, the genre has hamstrung itself. Releasing new opera directly to the internet, where it can be watched freely, downloaded, and played on repeat - where the established audience can grow to love it and, crucially, still exist in a viewable format long enough to attract new fans - is such an obvious improvement in the opera distribution channel that I hope to see hundreds, thousands more 15-minutes operas posted from all over the world in the future.
Read the full description of the creative process and my goals for the work at my site, linked in the YouTube description
"Come With Me" is a new opera written, composed, and filmed by me, and sung by me and a few friends (we're all professional singers) . The opera is micro in scale, at just over 12 minutes, but is packed with full-sized drama, passion, and singing. The concept behind composing and filming "Come With Me" to post on YouTube is to present opera in the same way as other contemporary music - short, sweet, and directly to your phone or computer.
"Come With Me" my attempt to modernize and personalize opera, through film and accessibility. There is no "performance" to attend. These singers aren't on a stage - they are walking around Jonathan's house. This audience isn't a hundred yards away - they are with the singers, observing the drama unfold from inside the room. That's the modernization that filming allows. Further setting this opera apart is the personalization - the ‘you’ in YouTube. This is no high-budget, all-star adaptation of La Boheme. This is a group of friends with a camera posting their creation to the internet. This is a sampling of the talent that is lying dormant around you. The cost and effort of realizing new, vibrant opera in a traditional format is prohibitive to any but the established composers and houses who can afford to take a bath on ticket revenue because they do not realize that people only come to concerts to hear music they already know, that when the only venue for new music is live performance, the genre has hamstrung itself. Releasing new opera directly to the internet, where it can be watched freely, downloaded, and played on repeat - where the established audience can grow to love it and, crucially, still exist in a viewable format long enough to attract new fans - is such an obvious improvement in the opera distribution channel that I hope to see hundreds, thousands more 15-minutes operas posted from all over the world in the future.
Read the full description of the creative process and my goals for the work at my site, linked in the YouTube description
Role: Librettist, Composer, Singer, Actor, Director
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