What It's Like to be Onstage During an Opera

Opera is fresh, exciting and innovative, and if you don't believe me, I hope this blog post will change your open mind. This weekend I was in the University of Nebraska - Lincoln's production of A Wedding, by William Bolcom. It's a modern opera set in the 70s, and everyone who came to see it loved it. I promise.

A Wedding is essentially a story about all the mishaps that occur over the course of Dino and Muffin's wedding day, and the best part of the show is finding out what each character's secret is. One of the characters in the opera is a videographer, and I thought it would be a fun idea to turn his prop into a real-live video camera that could get actual footage of the scenes.
Joe, my friend who played the videographer, was all for the idea when I pitched it to him. When I told my instructor at Jacht Ad Lab about the idea, she was beyond excited about it, and loaned me the agency's GoPro for the week of the production.

Below is a picture that the incredibly talented Michael Reinmiller took of the performance. Kneeling in the front of the stage is Joe the Videographer, getting that golden GoPro footage.

My friend David is currently in a videography class at the university was excited about this Go Pro footage as well. He had already been covering the opera as part of a project for the class, so he used the on-stage clips Joe got as b-roll in this excellent video he put together. Check it out!



If you thought opera was stuffy and boring, I urge you to look into what opera is going on in your community and check it out, I guarantee you'll be surprised!