A New Urgency OPERA 2018, at Estabelecimento Prisional de Leiria - Jovens (Prision) © SAMP used by permission For thirty years, Jonathan Dove has been composing community operas with and for non-professional performers. His reflective essay on his experience – which is now available as a downloadable PDF – [...]

The Monster in the Maze More than a year ago, as part of the new educational program Liceu Aprèn, the Gran Teatre del Liceu decided to promote a participatory opera project in order to give high school students the opportunity to participate in the process of creating [...]

Who needs community opera? Part Three: It could be a model of international collaboration Jonathan Dove Jonathan Dove, The Monster in the Maze, 2015 production by the Berlin Philharmonic, photograph by Monika Rittershaus, courtesy of Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker I sometimes ruefully observe that, whatever I do, Benjamin [...]

Who needs community opera? Part Two: Telling a universal story Jonathan Dove Jonathan Dove, The Monster in the Maze, 2015production by the Berlin Philharmonic, photograph by Monika Rittershaus, courtesy of Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker One drawback to co-creating operas with their community performers is that you can end [...]

Who needs community opera? Part One: ‘Let’s take over a whole town!’ Jonathan Dove Jonathan Dove, In Search of Angels, 1995 © Richard Davies courtesy of Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. ‘Let’s take over a whole town!’ I suggested to Glyndebourne in 1988. ‘Everyone can be in an opera.’ I [...]

TRACTION at Cornell Tech, New York (Image source: pixabay.com) The XR Access Initiative kicked off in Summer 2019 with the first XR Access Symposium. Over 120 technologists, advocates, researchers, and industry leaders joined us for talks, demos, and working group sessions that generated actionable plans for making XR [...]