Since a couple of years, opera houses have started transmitting selected performances via live streaming over the Internet, in order to make them accessible to a broader audience. In this context, the "Salome Experience" project, carried out at the University of Vienna in collaboration with Vienna State Opera, investigates innovative approaches for further closing the gap between stage and audience via modern communication technology. This paper discusses the prototypical realization of some of these ideas in the framework of a dedicated live streaming transmission of the opera "Salome" by Richard Strauss during a symposium celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Internet in Austria. Moreover we present a novel smartphone app which has evolved from this initiative and aims at providing the audience with "smart subtitles" to make stage performances more accessible, with a specific focus on the audiences of large open air events or streaming transmissions.

Top