| From 1993 until 2008 Companions Opera presented some of the best-known opera titles in a '360 Degree' setting in arenas and stadiums. 15 Of these artistically and musical highlights can be viewed for free on this website. It is a big 'thank you' to all who have participated and/or visited our productions. And it provides a new audience the opportunity to discover our productions. | ||
| It all started in the early nineties, when the attention for opera was declining around the world and opera gained the reputation of being more 'elite'. | ||
| We were inspired by some early initiatives in England and The Netherlands, which wanted to introduce opera to a new and broader audience by presenting the most famous of all operas, Aida, in venues for indoor sports. In 1992, we started a collaboration with the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam with the intention of developing a series of opera productions, presented yearly under the branding: 'Opera in Ahoy'. | ||
| We wanted to be the 'Dutch opera house' for new audiences who wanted to get acquainted with opera, but did not want to go to the conventional opera houses. | ||
| We hoped to arouse curiosity, to establish a fanbase for our productions to be able to continue and, more awareness for this unique art form in general. By producing opera in a sports venue meant that the action took place in the middle of the arena - the 360 degree setting - enabling the visitors to have excellent sight lines from every seat around the arena. It also meant that the actual stage size was many times larger than that of a traditional opera house, thus allowing much more dramatic action to take place. | ||
| The one thing we did not want was to present only the most popular operas. We started officially in January 1994 with the double bill Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci in the '360 Degree' setting, a format which became our signature for all our productions. | ||
| It was a bold approach, because these two operas are not really well known titles like Carmen or Aida. We believed that we had the elements to make it work: | ||
| . Two short operas with touching stories about love and revenge and with beautiful melodies that are pleasing to first time listeners as well; | ||
| . With a set and staging concept created by Bernard Arnould and Bruno Stefano, that took the audience back to a small village in Sicily at the end of the 19th century; | ||
| . With an experienced cast under the inspiring leadership of conductor Roberto Paternostro; | ||
| . With the help of a large chorus especially assembled for this production; | ||
| . And about a hundred persons of all ages who filled the enormous space of the arena and added real-life scenes. | ||
| It gave us the confidence that this production would be the best way to introduce our approach of making opera accessible to a broader audience. | ||
| The positive reception by the media and the attending audience, encouraged us to continue. We announced Carmen as our 2nd production for January 1995, which was an overwhelming sold-out success. | ||
| We started to invite arena managers who were, like Ahoy, part of the European Arena Association, to discuss opportunities to bring our productions abroad. Meanwhile we went ahead with our next production: Puccini's final masterpiece Turandot. Followed in 1998 with our Aida. | ||
| In all our productions, we took great care to reproduce original settings: We literally took our audience on a trip from a small village in Sicily (Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci) to Carmen in Seville - with the old cigar factory wall as part of the set - onwards to Asia - with the stone soldiers from Xian representing the 'icy' climate of Turandot's regime. We finished in Egypt at the construction site of the Pharaoh's Pyramid for Aida. | ||
| In 1998 we presented our first productions outside Ahoy Rotterdam in the Gelredome Arena in Arnhem and the Sportpaleis Arena in Antwerp. Meanwhile we worked on our final three operas for Ahoy and a special Rigoletto production for the Rotterdam Cultural Capital City of 2001, while visiting other cities to introduce them to our productions and concept. | ||
| The final three Ahoy-productions were approached from a more imaginative perspective. We asked our creative teams to develop concepts for Verdi's La Traviata, Nabucco and Il Trovatore, that would emphazise 'the emotional message' of each opera instead of mirroring the 'real' world as we did in the earlier productions. | ||
| For La Traviata we covered the entire arena floor with sheets of enlarged music scores. This vast emptiness was the ideal setting for soprano Stefania Bonfadelli as Violetta to 'move the audience to tears' in our interpretation of the final scene. | ||
| Artistically we succeeded beyond our hopes and dreams to produce an opera in a big venue without any gaudy special effect elements that are usually used to pep-up a scene. Again, we received great reviews and appreciation from the audience for the high quality of this daring approach. | ||
| Our international breakthrough came with the planned opening of the new soccer stadium of Schalke 04 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The management of the stadium, in collaboration with the local Neue Philharmonie and its enthusiastic conductor Johannes Wildner, planned several big opening events and for the classical event they selected our Aida production. | ||
| Almost at the same time we were also approached by the management of the prestigious Stade de France in Paris to present our Aida there. This was our biggest challenge so far as we had to enlarge the production to fit into one of the largest stadiums in Europe with the capacity to seat over 80,000 visitors. | ||
| Both productions were performed within two-weeks period in September 2001 and were an enormous success, with the public as the press. | ||
| Based on this success we developed a stadium version of Carmen and a complete new stadium version of Nabucco. The latter we subsequently also resized to be presented in arenas. These three productions took us to many new cities in Germany and Switzerland, back to Gelsenkirchen and Paris. Even in the stadium in Shanghai, China, we presented Carmen. | ||
| Due to the financial crises that started in 2008 and shortly thereafter the introduction of high quality streaming services with affordable ticket prices of operas from the MET and other opera houses to cinemas, our final production was the Paris stadium production of Nabucco in September 2008. | ||
| Looking back, we feel privileged that we, as a privately funded, commercial opera company, with the support from so many promoters and venues in so many cities, could stage our productions in venues and stadiums with seating capacities from 6.000 to 80.000 in Europe and Asia. We feel proud to have reached more than one million spectators in the 15 years of our producing and touring endeavours. | ||
| Because of our unique ‘360 Degree’ approach, we offered our audiences a "top-down viewing experience" and the close proximity to the action on stage from practically all seats. The size of the stage area allowed the viewers to be immersed in a 'living journey' through different worlds, actions and atmospheres, like a 3D film, but without the 3D glasses. The entire floor of the arena or the stadium changed into a magical, theatrical world using elaborate stage settings, with first class singers and actors and the best local orchestras and choirs. With state-of-the-art light and sound technology as well as sophisticated special effects, our productions addressed all senses to the max. Each member of the audience was spellbound and enjoyed an unforgettable evening and unique opera experience. | ||
| This live-experience will never be offered by us again, but we have decided to make all our live video recordings available on this archival website as well as on our YouTube channel @companions-opera. This website is a big 'thank you' to all who have participated and/or visited our productions. And it provides a new audience the opportunity to discover our productions. | ||
| We hope you will enjoy the operas! | ||
| Peter Kroone | ||
| Producer | ||