The world's first digital opera premieres next week

Lee Reynolds conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO)

VOPERA: The Virtual Opera Project has teamed up with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) and over 80 singers to produce the world’s first digital opera.

Starting out with global Zoom auditions and rehearsals, VOPERA have brought the production to life through socially distanced orchestral studio recording, individually captured audio recordings, hand-drawn set and costumes, and body-double acting using a homemade green-screen studio overlaid with the recorded cast’s singing faces.

This production of Maurice Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges is the company’s first, and will be premiered on 16 November 2020 at 8pm.

You can watch it on LPO’s YouTube channel, and will be available to stream free of charge from anywhere in the world for 30 days.

Rachael Hewer directs

L’Enfant et les Sortilèges tells the story of a home-schooled child who’s bad behaviour is punished by a variety of household objects and animals that come fantastically to life.

Conductor Lee Reynolds has created a specially reduced arrangement of Ravel’s music to enable the LPO to record the score in line with current restrictions, reworking Ravel’s extraordinary opera for an orchestral ensemble of 27 musicians.

“We've all faced a huge challenge in discovering how musicians, spread thousands of miles apart, can make meaningful music together, and this brilliantly ambitious project has demanded solutions that none of us could have dreamed of only months ago”

Lee Reynolds, conductor

Read more about the project here.