Composer Cameron Sinclair is in the middle of rehearsals when his mobile phone rings. The cheerful sounds of chattering children echo in the background as he good-naturedly agrees to take time out to discuss his latest project – a dramatic re-working of Bizet’s opera, Carmen, which will be performed as a ‘virtual opera’.
A what? Haven’t heard of a ‘virtual opera’ before? It’s not surprising, considering the performance is believed to be the first of its kind. About 250 schoolchildren, from six schools in the Kings Cross area of London, have been involved in workshops for the past few months to create a new multi-media version of Carmen to be performed simultaneously on-screen and on stage – for all the world to see.
The project, Sinclair explains, is kind of an electronic offshoot of a larger education project run by the English Pocket Opera Company (EPOC) this year. That project, Carmen Education, involved 10,000 children from 60 schools across seven London boroughs, participating in workshops which culminated in ‘mini-operas’ (about 5-10 minutes long), based on issues raised in Carmen – The Choice of Don Jose.
The ‘Virtual Carmen’ project was the brainchild of Derek Smith, the director of the Kings Cross Education Action Zone (KXEAZ), who drew in the EPOC team to creatively exploit the laser broadband technology linking schools in the region.
Five primary schools – Blessed Sacrament, Copenhagen, St Andrews, Vittoria and Winton Primary Schools, along with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Secondary School, are connected via the infra-red broadband laser network.
Smith initially wanted to use the high-speed laser connection to showcase a virtual concert, but decided an opera would provide more opportunities for students to get involved in writing, composing, and creating sets.
Sinclair, the project’s musical director and a composer and conductor who has worked on projects with EPOC, admits he has never worked with this level of technology before. But also, he normally composes from scratch, so the idea of taking an existing work and re-writing it posed another new challenge for him.
‘We sat down, we cut the story and we got rid of a couple of characters, just to make it simpler and shorter,’ Sinclair explains. The primary school students have even written rap lyrics, to replace a ‘dual’ fight scene in the production, he said, and video diaries and text messaging are also being used to tell the story.
Says Sinclair, ‘[The pupils] have designed choreography, they’ve written fantastic rap lyrics. I’ve helped them write a melody for the chorus that they are also singing. And they’ve done backdrops and sets and costumes.’
Meanwhile, students from Elizabeth Garret Anderson Secondary School are providing a chorus and some instrumental, while a number of Sinclair’s own students from the Royal College of Music will also play as part of the production.
The project has not only been ‘enormously challenging’ technically, Sinclair admits, but also, creatively.
‘Obviously, what we wanted them [the students] to do was to actually come up with ideas and have a hand in the devising process,’ Sinclair says. ‘So it wasn’t just a case of flying in and saying, “This is what you’re doing”, there’s been an element of me going in there and saying, “OK, this is the scene, what kinds of music can we make from this?”’
He’s not sure what Bizet would think of the result, though. ‘I’ve had to completely murder and chop up the original piece,’ Sinclair notes. ‘One [number] has been turned into a calypso number, one of the others is a rap. I have a horrible feeling he’s [Bizet] is turning in his grave somewhere!’ He laughs.
For Peter Barret, Virtual Carmen’s Technical co-ordinator, who is also filling in for Derek Smith overseeing the project, Bizet’s Carmen was an obvious choice for this kind of venture.
’It’s a well known, exciting opera’, he says, ‘and the children have reinterpreted it in their own way.’
The two artistic directors who have been leading the project – Jo Allitt and Michael Fidler – will be in Portugal and America when the opera performance takes place. And according to Barrett, the students can’t believe that Allitt and Fidler will be watching the live-streamed performance from another continent.
Students will perform the opera at their individual schools, with all performances transmitted onto three screens at Copenhagen School via the broadband connection. Children will sing live on-stage, while, simultaneously, virtual opera characters join in the singing on screens behind them. Performers, both on-stage and on-screen, will be conducted by EPOC’s Artistic Director, Sian Edwards, via video conferencing technology.
Barrett says this project is really ‘just the beginning’. The idea at this stage, he explains, is that the website will remain, the project will be evaluated by Pley, (Proactive Learning from Early Years), and then the KXEAZ can move forward, to continue to use the technology in creative ways.
But the main thing, Barret observes, is that the children are really enjoying the whole process, from creative to technical. ‘They are really benefiting from a completely unique experience. It’s just amazing to see.’
The ‘Virtual Carmen’ opera will be streamed live on the web on July 3, at www.carmenavalook.com
