Create Virtual Auditions Online with Music Xray for Libertaria the Virtual Opera

Create Virtual Auditions Online with Music Xray for Libertaria the Virtual Opera

In cyberspace, one person reaches out to tens of thousands of others with a tap on an iPad. The potential talent pool for any project explodes exponentially online. Creative individuals use sites like Kickstarter, MusicXray, Wreckamovie.com and the Amazon Turk to reach out to countless numbers of potential skilled musicians and artists. Wreckamovie, a crowdsourcing website for film and music productions, makes international collaboration easy for productions like the recent Free Will: Opera by You, premiered at the Savonlinna Opera Festival this summer. The Amazon Turk, run by Amazon.com, allows a person to assign hundreds of microtasks at pennies apiece. A composer can sign up as Music Industry Professional at MusicXray and easily set up virtual auditions that reach tens of thousands of musicians. These sites are simply a handful of the incredible networking tools available today.

Creating an opera as a one‐woman show normally demands vast resources well outside the average struggling musician’s immediate grasp. Add to that a need for mobility and choosing to create an opera outside the realm of a specific geographic location makes perfect sense to the 21st century musician. Libertaria: The Virtual Opera has a virtual stage, a virtual orchestra, a virtual choir, virtual rehearsals, and virtual actors. Libertaria’s operatic sci‐fi tale of evil geneticists, drug addiction, explosions, and a post‐USA dystopia depends heavily on technology for its execution and creation.
Using websites like MusicXray, Artistopia, Facebook, and Twitter, the author hosted a series of online auditions in summer of 2011. Interested parties submitted audition mp3s via e‐mail or MusicXray, which has a simple interface for reviewing sound clips. Accepted singers signed a talent release and received a Cast Information Packet that included a Welcome Letter, schedule, cast assignments, and home recording information. The cast for Libertaria morphs over time because of singer availability and score needs, with current openings for chorus members for the finale. 

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