Drive-In Opera & Dual Delivery Supertitles
How do you safely perform an opera for a live audience of hundreds in the age of COVID-19?
San Diego Opera opened their 2020-21 season as the first major North American opera company to mount a socially distanced opera in an outdoor drive-in setting. Overcoming the many challenges facing this production took months of planning, collaboration, and cooperation both within the opera company and with their partners. One challenge was how to deliver supertitles for hundreds of socially distanced patrons in their cars at the drive-in performance.
San Diego Opera’s drive-in production of La bohème opened on October 24, 2020 at the Pechanga Arena parking lot in San Diego, California. (Supertitles by Bruce Stasyna. Photo by Edward Wilensky. Courtesy of San Diego Opera.)
San Diego Opera knew that other opera companies used LiveNote to deliver supertitles in nontraditional performance spaces. After talking with InstantEncore, it became clear that LiveNote could send the supertitles to patrons' mobile devices in their cars during the performance. But what about patrons without smartphones or tablets?
Patrons throughout the Pechanga Arena parking lot watch San Diego Opera’s performance of La bohème. (Photo by Alan Hess. Courtesy of San Diego Opera.)
The opera company planned to stream the live performance on jumbo screens located throughout the parking lot. They would need to include the supertitles on the jumbo screens in addition to sending them to mobile devices in the audience. They would also need the ability for one operator to send the supertitles simultaneously to the mobile devices and the jumbo screens. Could LiveNote do that?
“InstantEncore has been a supportive and cooperative partner in creating a dual system approach for the delivery of supertitles – projecting them onto the Drive-In screens as well as sending them to patrons’ individual devices.”
We recommended using OBS Studio, a free and open source software for video recording and live streaming, to add LiveNote’s supertitles feed to the live video streaming on the jumbo screens. The concept worked great, but there was an aesthetic challenge.
The original LiveNote feed displayed in a black rectangle with white text beneath the live performance video. (Supertitles by Bruce Stasyna. Photo by Edward Wilensky. Courtesy of San Diego Opera.)
The LiveNote feed appeared as a black rectangle with white text at the bottom of the jumbo screen. San Diego Opera worried that the black rectangle took up too much space on the video stream. They needed a solution that would allow for a full screen display of the live performance video while overlaying the supertitles on the lower portion of the screen.
We created a second LiveNote feed with a green screen compatible background. At the opera company’s suggestion, we changed the font color to help with readability. While the original feed delivered the supertitles to the audience’s individual mobile devices, the second feed would appear at the bottom of the live video on the jumbo screens. San Diego Opera could adjust the font size as needed.
Jumbo screens throughout the parking lot displayed the live performance video with titles appearing in the lower portion of the screen. (Supertitles by Bruce Stasyna. Photo by Edward Wilensky. Courtesy of San Diego Opera.)
On opening night, San Diego Opera treated audiences to a new adaptation of La bohème performed in an unexpected venue. Patrons parked their vehicles in socially distanced spaces at the Pechanga Arena parking lot. They watched a 90-minute live performance on two outdoor stages, one for singers and the set, the other for musicians from the San Diego Symphony. Jumbo screens erected throughout the parking lot displayed the live performance, while patrons remained in their vehicles and listened to it through a localized FM broadcast on their car radios.
LiveNote simultaneously delivered supertitles to patrons’ mobile devices and the jumbo screens during San Diego Opera’s drive-in production of La bohème. (Supertitles by Bruce Stasyna. Photo by Edward Wilensky.)
How did audiences respond to the drive-in opera production? “The response has been unanimously positive and celebratory,” said Bruce Stasyna, Conductor, Chorus Master and Music Administrator for San Diego Opera, “This has been a rare opportunity for opera lovers to assemble and collectively experience live theatre again.”
Would you like to learn more?
Let’s talk! We would love to discuss how LiveNote can help your performances and events. Contact David.