The fourth edition of World Opera Day with the theme ‘Unboxing Opera’ was celebrated this 25 October with live and online contributions all around the world. This year’s wide theme ‘Unboxing Opera’ allowed our members, opera companies, opera producers, opera singers and audiences to participate actively in World Opera Day.
As every year, some opera houses have opened their doors to the curious and welcomed them for a rehearsal (Donizetti Opera), a workshop (Irish National Opera, Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier), for a backstage tour (Sofia National Opera & Ballet) or surprise concerts (Poznań Opera House). Teatro Regio di Parma opened its windows and performed to the public on the street outside!
World Opera Day also was the opportunity to launch a project for the audience and Teatro Nacional de São Carlos published an illustrated book on opera for young people; Teatro de la Maestranza launched a podcasts series; Opera Prelude held its conference on Young Artists; La Monnaie / De Munt extended its online platform Behind the scenes, to allow all to discover any secret part of their building and its function; Scottish Opera inaugurated an exhibition exploring mental health issues; Capella Cracoviensis premiered Dido & Aeneas, a social project in 17 languages.
Companies made some concerts or productions available for streaming on 25 October, like Rossini in Wildbad, Opera Studio Jerusalem, Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Norwegian National Opera & Ballet.
World Opera Day also was a day of discussions: Association for Opera in Canada, Klaipėda State Music Theatre and Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe organised public live or online discussions on the role of opera for society.
Most commonly, ‘Unboxing Opera’ was interpreted as an invitation to reveal how an opera is produced or how a theatre works. We invite you to have a look at the beautiful ‘Descubriendo la Opera’, a video series on the different steps to create an opera, coordinated by Ópera Latinoamérica and with the participation of over 15 Opera houses in South America and Spain. Opéra de Lyon and Oper Frankfurt created video series on that topic as well. In shorter video formats MusikTheater an der Wien, Tapestry Opera, Opéra de Dijon, Opéra de Paris, Staatstheater Stuttgart, Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Teatro Sociale Como, Opera XXI, Grand Théâtre de Genève and many others have explained their work, showed the emotions opera can provide to the people and thanked their audiences.
Finally, we are really happy that for the second year, Chorale de la Magnifique in Port Harcourt, Nigeria also participated to World Opera Day with a concert on 26 and 27 November.
The #WorldOperaDay campaign is also growing on social media. The mentions of #WorldOperaDay on Instagram are now over 12K, with over 2K mentions only on 25 October 2022. Twitter is also an appreciated media with over 3K mentions in the week of World Opera Day.
We thank you very much for your contributions that made this day really special!
