An interactive, virtual opera house for mobile and virtual reality.
Operaverse is Gothenburg Opera's virtual opera house – an interactive universe with Gothenburg Opera's art forms: opera, musical, dance and orchestral music. The user can, among other things, sing with opera singers, be surrounded by dance and music and take part in a musical choreography. Operaverse is available for download where apps are available.
You can find more information about the experiences at operaverse.se.
What should a virtual opera house contain? How should it feel to experience? Who is it for, and why? A preliminary study provided valuable insights into how we can attract the target group of 18 to 35 year olds open their eyes to the Gothenburg Opera and all the exciting things that take place here 365 days a year. Insights into how we might reach young adults with content that enchants them and arouses wonder by creating a space where the experience begins.
The preliminary study was carried out with a focus group analysis, a broad workshop with over 130 participants. It provided insights that we tested on a group of experts with different backgrounds. The insights we are now further developing are:
What we offer must be based on what we already do, have value for the recipient, lower thresholds, have the highest quality and arouse wonder. We strive for our own learning to take part in the rapid change through new technology that is taking place and to share our experience with others.
The feasibility study was carried out by Visual Arena and financed by the Region Västra Götaland, (Koncernstab digitalisering). The study's target group analysis was carried out by students from the digital design line from Yrgo.
Göteborg Opera and &friends explored created an extension of the acclaimed children's opera Sandvargen by programming and curating an LLM chatbot. After the show kids could ask questions to a virtual version of the wise, thoughtful and kooky character Sandvargen (The Sand Wolf), who replied using his unusual method of expression.
Imagine having a dancer from GöteborgsOperans Danskompani at home on the kitchen table, or meeting one of the characters in one of our operas who sits next to you and tells secrets from the show!
In connection with the dance company's pop-up festival in May 2022, we published one of the dance company previous dancers, Lee Yuan-Tu, as an avatar. This is what it looked like when he danced at one of our partners, Visual Arena.
In the future we will explore how we can use avatars within opera and musicals. The Lee avatar was created with motion capture together with Atvis and the 3D-artist Jacob Cederberg.
In the spring of 2022, we carried out a learning project where we have created one of the scenes from the dance work Here not here into a virtual stage. With the help of the motion caption film technique, we have filmed dancers in GöteborgsOperans Danskompani and created avatars. Thanks to VR headsets, the viewer can get up close to the dancers inside a glass labyrinth. Because the performance can be experienced from different angles – you can experience the same piece over and over again without tiring of it.
We showed the result during the premiere of Here not here, but it is also possible to take parts of this performance on future tours.
The project aimed to explore digital art from an performing arts perspective while learning, among other things, how digital tools could free up rehearsal time on stage by allowing the scenography to be visualized without physically building it up.
How old do you have to be to use Operaverse?
Do I need VR glasses to experience Operaverse?
Can I use any mobile phone to access Operaverse?
Will I be able to see stage performances in VR?
Is my personal data processed if I use Operaverse?
The dancer’s movements are recorded using motion-capture, before being re-created as VR avatars.
