The Digital Advance meeting at Dutch National Opera & Ballet in Amsterdam welcomed over 100 delegates from over 50 companies in 17 countries.
The forum was opened by our hosts at Dutch National Opera Sophie de Lint and Stijn Schoonderwoerd as well as Barbara Gessler, head of unit at Creative Europe.
The support of both OperaVision and Next Stage by the European Commission is greatly appreciated by Opera Europa members and directly influenced the programme of this event.
OperaVision partners, business and finance directors as well as artistic administrators were united to address a variety of topics, responding to the Next Stage capacity building strand of digital transformation. Thanks to our partnership with FEDORA, delegates could benefit from presentations by Bird & Bird and Drooms, learning about secured cloud based organisational processes, tracking of activity, and legal digital transactions such as contract signing.
Multi-camera director Jonathan Haswell and producer Gemma Dixon shared their experience of filming main stage productions, offering insights into where financial savings can be made and dangers of cutting certain corners in preparing film capture.
OperaVision partners met over a number of sessions to discuss the evaluation of OperaVision, with the guidance of Dr Francesco Chiaravalloti from the University of Amsterdam.
A series of negotiation issues between different stakeholders of the opera industry were addressed. Opening with an animated debate on exclusivity clauses, a panel under the coordination by André Comploi (Milan) elaborated on a joint position between theatres, bringing the points of view of labels with Clemens Trautmann, President of Deutsche Grammophon, and producers with Ernst Buchrucker from Unitel.
Another animated discussion chaired by Jaap van Hellenberg Hubar (Amsterdam) on grand rights vs. small rights followed, including positions of three major publishing houses thanks to Wiebke Busch (Wise), Sally Cavender (Faber) and Marco Mazzolini (Universal).
Lastly, members could approach the topic of digital scores both from the publisher’s side as well as in organisational terms of digital transformation within an opera company, the reflection being led by music librarians and Alexandra Stampler-Brown (Düsseldorf) with contributions of Marco Mazzolini (Universal), Joscha Schaback (Schott) and Janis Susskind (Boosey).
Delegates had the opportunity to enjoy the European premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s opera Blue, which was greeted with a standing ovation by the audience.
Susanna Werger
Membership Coordinator
