LEO DOULTON

VO Home | Current Goals

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Virtually Opera has a simple mission:

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"To create opera that is innovative, open to all, and broadens the boundaries of the form."

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How does that work?

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Innovative

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We keep trying new things, and try to have explicit questions for each project. Sometimes, our experiments don't succeed. But when they do, it opens whole new avenues of expression.

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Open to all

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We make shows that we hope anyone can enjoy, and take questions like 'would someone who's never seen an opera get as much (or more) out of this as someone who's been a connoisseur for years?' very seriously. We don't assume that music is a universal language, but one that exists in particular cultures. So to ask 'who is this open to?' is to ask 'who already speaks this language of music/film/staging?'

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Broadens the Boundaries

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We make fusion work. That's often combining opera with different genres of film, or with mediums like sketch comedy and table-top roleplaying. Key to this is a principle that it's not 'an opera that appropriates another form', but an example of that form that needs to be an opera to be fully-realised artistically. Conversation, not appropriation.

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In short, we don't believe that opera's inherently a superior artform. It's a great form, but one that needs to escape a lot of its aristocratic legacy to enter the modern world.