Die Walküre (Act III)
Music by Richard Wagner

Hollywood Bowl
Los Angeles, California
July 17, 2022
Additional performances at Detroit Opera House
September 17-20, 2022

Director: Yuval Sharon
Associate Director: Diana Wyenn
Production Designers: Jason H. Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras
Lighting Designer: Pablo Santiago
Lead Technical Artist: Andrea Carver
Technical Artists: Eli McCaffrey, Thomas Hamilton and Mikayla Wenzel
Technology Integration Lead: Derek Christiansen
Disguise Programmer: Simón Anaya
Costume Designer: Carlos Soto
Conductor: Gustavo Dudamel (Los Angeles), Sir Andrew Davis (Detroit)

Yuval Sharon’s staging of Die Walküre, Act III, The Valkyries, uses green-screen technology to seamlessly blend onstage action with real-time computer graphics and animation, created by Jason Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras of PXT Studio. Beginning with a world built in Unreal Engine, a tool typically designed for the video game industry, Sharon worked with Thompson and Pietras to storyboard the piece, using VR headsets to place virtual cameras throughout the digital landscape as if he were a film director working on location. These virtual cameras—which can be automated, panned, and zoomed with all of the flexibility of a physical camera—work in conjunction with five robotic cameras which capture the performers from a variety of angles onstage in front of a 16-foot green-screen. As the performance unfolds onstage, the feed from the physical cameras and virtual cameras are then synthesized, with real-time video effects used to keep color grading consistent, and to help the performers blend into the virtual environment. The end result is a live film that exists dynamically with the onstage performance, while still being replicable on a shot-for-shot basis; audiences are free to watch the action on-stage and on projection screens simultaneously, considering the uneasy relationship between live performance and new media in opera’s future.

Photography courtesy of the LA Phil/Detroit Opera.