World Opera Day was launched for the first time on 25 October 2019 to raise awareness of the social impact of opera in society.
The first edition of World Opera Day shows encouraging results for the future of the initiative. Activities took place both on local level and on social media where the worldwide ambition became a reality, even if most of the live events took place in Europe, South and North America. The figures show that the opera world – opera houses, singers, opera lovers – embraced the idea of a World Opera Day and took the opportunity to highlight the social impact of opera.
Launch of World Opera Day
The initiative was officially launched by Nicholas Payne, director of Opera Europa, during the association’s autumn conference at Opéra national du Rhin, with Ernesto Ottone - UNESCO, Tobias Biancone - International Theatre Institute, Marc Scorca - OPERA America, Edilia Gänz - FEDORA, Marc Grandmontagne - Deutscher Bühnenverein, Jiachen Zhao - National Centre for the Performing Arts Beijing, George Isaakyan - Russian Association for Theatre Music, Christina Loewen - Opera.ca, Laurence Lamberger-Cohen - Réunion des Opéras de France, Ignacio García-Belenguer - Opera XXI and Julia Lagazuhère - Opera for Peace.
Ambassadors
This first World Opera Day was endorsed by five ambassadors from different parts of the world: British actor Stephen Fry, Canadian singer-composer Rufus Wainwright, American mezzo Raehann Bryce-Davis, Mexican tenor Javier Camarena and Chinese conductor Lü Jia shared their message of faith in the value of opera for society on the www.worldoperaday.com website.
Local events
On 25 October over 30 opera houses from more than 15 countries around the world from Japan to the United States organised local events involving their community.
Teatro Regio di Torino, Teatro Regio di Parma, Sofia Opera and Ballet, Israeli Opera offered a free musical programme in public spaces. Teatro de la Maestranza also went outside its walls and installed a free listening station in the heart of Seville. Oper Wuppertal and Fondazione Teatro Donizetti opened their house to offer a visit of rehearsals. Opera Bałtycka Gdansk organised a contest to win an operatic experience. Irish National Opera and its INO Jukebox on Facebook involved the virtual community.
Social Media
World Opera Day led to a large activity on social media. Over 50 opera house around the world were active, and thousands of singers and opera lovers celebrated the day. The most important buzz took place on Twitter, where the hashtag #WorldOperaDay was used over 5.000 times, followed by Facebook and Instagram (almost 3.000 uses of #WorldOperaDay).
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Twitter:
5063 Tweets with #WorldOperaDay
3109 contributors
Most active contributor: OMTF, Opera Europa, teteateteopera
Most popular: Stephen Fry (57.9k views)
Facebook:
Over 27.000 video views and 156.000 people reached
thanks to our members and ambassadors
Instagram:
2665 uses of #WorldOperaDay
285 uses of #worldoperaday2019
523 uses of #diamundialdelaopera
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OperaVision for World Opera Day
OperaVision, the free streaming platform supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme, engaged for World Opera Day and offered a wide programme of famous titles from houses around the world. The streams generated an increasing number of visitors on the OperaVision platform. La bohème from NCPA Mumbai reached 16.560 views, Carmen from NCPA Beijing 7.369 views, Die Fledermaus from Wiener Staatsoper 25.678 views, Don Giovanni from Teatro dell’Opera di Roma 11.729 views and The Barber of Seville from Municipal die Santiago 9.577 views.
World Opera Day in the media
World Opera Day was present in the media as well. Online press articles and specialised radio stations shared the information with enthusiasm in Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, UK and USA.