New touring opera company brings Augmented Reality into the home

Ulster Touring Opera takes to the road in 2021, but in the meantime it is using cutting-edge technology to reach audiences in lockdown

At a time when opera companies are facing unprecedented challenges, it's heartening to have good news to report as a new opera company is launched on the island of Ireland.

Ulster Touring Opera is a new cross-border company based in Belfast which will tour opera to towns and cities throughout the nine counties of historic Ulster: six counties in Northern Ireland and three in the Republic. The first fully staged production will take to the road in 2021.

The company will be using Augmented Reality technology to bring an immersive experience of opera audiences watching at home. Technology created by Volograms and Sentireal makes it possible to transform any room into the set of Don Giovanni simply by using a smartphone or tablet. UTO is making an AR film of the final scene of Mozart’s opera with baritone Ross Ramgobin as Giovanni and bass Alan Ewing as the Commendatore. Virtual holograms (or ‘volograms’) transform the viewer into a character in the scene, moving around the performers and witnessing Don Giovanni’s final moments. The research into adapting this technology for the performing arts has been made possible through the support of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Future Screens NI and Digital Catapult.

UTO artistic director Dafydd Hall Williams, formerly head of artistic management at WNO and general manager of Northern Ireland Opera said: ‘Across Ulster, from Letterkenny to Armagh and from Cavan to Newtownabbey, we will work tirelessly to bring the beauty of opera back into people’s lives at this challenging time.’ Hall Williams added that the use of new Augmented Reality technology in opera would be a positive legacy from the Covid era, making the artform more accessible and immediate than ever.’

Find out more about Ulster Touring Opera by visiting www.ulstertouringopera.com