A VIXEN’S TALE
Accompanying the Welsh National Opera’s production of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen is artificial reality (AR) experience A Vixen’s Tale, produced in collaboration with AR mavens Arcade and illustrator Xavier Segers. The opera is a tale of the adventures undertaken by a wild vixen who escapes her adopted home to live in the wilds.
A Vixen’s Tale is described by its digital producer, David Massey, as a “human-scale tunnel book” in which participants re-enact scenes from the opera. A physical piece, Massey highlights its “five arches representing seasons that allows you to step inside and explore the opera’s themes and settings physically and through augmented reality.”
A multi-sensory experience, A Vixen’s Tale also incorporates a gaming component through its implementation of AR. “The biggest challenge,” says Massey, “is making the piece accessible to all – this is what we really want to do with this piece.”
Massey notes that past projects The Magic Butterfly and Rhondda Rebel had age or content restrictions, A Vixen’s Tale is accessible to all audiences. “There’s two elements to it,” he says, “there’s the digital aspect which will give you the augmented reality itself, but we want to make it accessible to all. So, people who don’t want to use the digital element still get some sense of the experience just by seeing this beautiful set, and by exploring its beautiful illustrations.”
The integration of digital technologies with the arts, Massey assures us, is not for fleeting novel purposes. “Immersive technologies lend themselves well to opera because opera is itself an immersive experience. We had a good start with our successful VR piece, Magic Butterfly. For us, that was an interesting experience, that was us putting our toe into the water. Ultimately, our ambition is to move towards creating a fully-fledged digitalised opera that uses what we have learned from our previous projects.”
The Cunning Little Vixen is on Sat 5 and Fri 11 Oct at the Wales Millennium Centre, and on the first of those dates The Vixen’s Tale will complement it, with an Explore Opera day offering free activities and performances.
words Gareth Kent
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Sat 5 Oct. Admission: free. Info: 029 2063 5000 / wno.org.uk
