The Making of Alicia and the White Rabbit: A New Children's Video Game Opera

After creating Libertaria: The Virtual Opera, the world's first machinima opera and one of the few comic book operas, I had an opportunity to collaborate on an interactive web opera The Village, created by composer Lee Scott. In The Village, participants could explore and decide the fate of a mythical world designed by Scott and populated by an interesting group of characters from a singing pig to a crazed tech guru.

Opera Highlights from Libertaria: The Virtual Opera

I have been wanting to create my own interactive video game opera for a long time. I have also wanted to work on a children's opera, Alicia the White Rabbit, one that my daughter and I could work on together. I decided on creating a text-based opera using Blogger as the primary engine. This allowed me to easily create the story, develop it online, and slowly add in components in several phases:

Phase I: Create Opera Website
Phase II: Add in text-based story and basic graphics
Phase III: Add in instrumental music and sheet music for viewers
Phase IV: Add in lyrics and vocal numbers
Phase V: Add in animation and additional interactivity

While this may seem like a strange way to create an opera production, after creating Libertaria: The Virtual Opera entirely online, I know that this is a new way of developing classical masterworks using available technology.

The Composer is Using Moviestorm for Video Game Graphics

In Alicia and the White Rabbit, the viewer helps Alicia make key storyline decisions. Simplified sheet music is available so the viewer can play along with the soundtrack and learn the music from the opera. In this way Alicia and the White Rabbit can serve both as an artistic experiment and as an educational tool to introduce students to opera.

Using the blog format for this text-based video game also gives greater flexibility in terms of easily expanding the storyline, adding in interactivity, and music, without resorting to massive amounts of revision.

The hope is that Alicia and the White Rabbit will set the groundwork for other video games operas. I would like to eventually start using programs like Unity to develop a fully immersive video game opera experience. Already other composers are working on these types of projects. What I have found most interesting about using the Internet and technology for opera is that now the opera has a universal and far-reaching impact. Libertaria has reached thousands and thousands of people, something would be impossible for most contemporary operas that often have only a single premier and then are quickly shut down because of economic reasons.

Easy to Play Sheet Music from Alicia and the White Rabbit

Creating an opera using software and the Internet reduces cost overall and increases overall impact. It is a win-win for contemporary composers wanting to reach out to a diverse audience through social media and the Internet, allowing composers to reach a younger audience and one that has more socioeconomic variation than that traditionally found in the concert hall, where tickets and cultural elitism has limited access to quality classical music.

Alicia and the White Rabbit is a work in progress and is currently in the beginning stages of Phase II. I encourage you to take a moment to check it out and leave a few comments and suggestions and download the sheet music.

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Award-winning composer and media artist Sabrina Pena Young provides high quality consulting and multimedia for a variety of international clients.

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https://sabrinapenayoung.wordpress.com/consulting/

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Contact her at: Spenayoung@gmail.com