An old art form gets technology better than many businesses

NET RESULTS:I'll come clean right away: I did not manage to do an ounce of work on Monday.

Oh, I intended to. I needed to get some writing done and also had a post-Christmas house project to finish up.

But no. Instead, I spent an entire day watching live opera rehearsals, joining a couple of masterclasses on singing, learning how to stagefight with a razor, and viewing some children warming up their voices for a performance that evening.

I met a composer as he saw his work being rehearsed, and watched, from backstage, the start of the third act of Wagner’s Die Walküre.

All from my sitting room, and in the company of tens of thousands of others around the world who, like me, ended up glued to their computer screens for one of the most addictive online events I’ve ever seen: the Royal Opera House’s daring “Royal Opera Live” day, streamed from the famed Covent Garden opera house all Monday long.

Yet again, one of the world’s oldest and most venerable art forms showed it gets technology, and can figure out truly fresh, innovative and exciting ways to use the internet, leaving many more contemporary types of entertainment – and for that matter, businesses – looking like web noobs.

I’ve been intrigued for a couple of years by the way classical arts organisations have led the way in exploring how they can use technology to expand their audiences, and reach those who cannot make it to live productions.

See how they’re doing it by checking out the rich variety of offerings available in Ireland throughout the year. People can dip a toe in, or satiate a passion for, opera, ballet and symphony by attending movie theatre high-definition broadcasts from New York’s Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bolshoi Ballet and other famed companies.

Slum it and view

The shows, listed on Classicalartsireland.com, roh.org.ukand theatre sites, typically include live backstage interviews and other insights into a production.

They make use of multiple, state-of-the-art cameras that provide incredible views, broadcast in clear stereo sound, and are an easy and relatively inexpensive way to see some of the world’s top performers – while slumming it in jeans and enjoying a box of popcorn.

But the Royal Opera Live day – #ROLive on Twitter – was something else again. It followed a similar event the ROH did with the Royal Ballet last March, which had more than 200,000 viewers.

The opera day, hosted by BBC newscaster Kirsty Wark, proved to be utterly compelling viewing.

Bravo to the many singers willing to bare all and risk being seen in street clothes, fluffing Russian pronunciation for a voice coach in a Eugene Onegin aria, being gently badgered by directors to try a different stage approach, learning how to pace a crescendo in Verdi or how to avoid being stabbed in a stage fight.

The ROH used social media to great effect, first to highlight the day well in advance on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, to encourage people to submit their own videos of themselves singing part of the Hebrew Chorus from Nabucco for a competition, and to incorporate the audience on the day by streaming their tweets across the screen and taking questions via Twitter for performers, conductors and directors.

New side of opera

Throughout the day, Twitter comments indicated many people like me simply gave up the pretence of trying to work and instead relished this novel insight into how not just one but several operas come into being onstage.

And regularly, someone would tweet along the lines that they had thought they didn’t like opera but were now so intrigued they couldn’t wait to go see something. For any organisation, that’s a result.

The final highlight was the concluding piece – a pre-recorded live broadcast from backstage of the third act of Wagner’s Die Walküre, a technical tour de force that even let viewers select whether they wanted to watch from the pit or the stage. “Best reality TV ever,” tweeted one viewer.

The only problem was bandwidth at the broadcast end. This was not an issue throughout the day, but frustratingly, so many were trying to watch the Wagner that many viewers got video but no audio, or a blank screen, or stuttering starts and stops.

That left some, including me, with a final feeling of slight deflation after a wonderful day.

And that’s the obvious issue that remains for any organisation using live streaming, a technology that has not yet quite come of age. Getting close, but too much depends still on user and broadcaster bandwidth.

The takeaway lesson for an organisation: ensure that you, at least, have the bandwidth for a full event broadcast – don’t risk audience exasperation.

Thankfully, highlights of the entire broadcast remain available at iti.ms/TLmToP, while the Walküre can be watched at iti.ms/TLmW3S, but only through today.

I encourage anyone working in the business, online or entertainment worlds to watch some of it, to see just how extraordinary and thoughtful a well-planned online event can be.