While browsing Facebook the other day, I saw that Adam McLean posted a link from NPR about opera being an earlier adaptor of modern media. The article then goes on to explain how the Met recently opened a production (the third out of four) where the background projects 3-D images. Even thought theatre in all of it forms taking leaps and bounds in order to advance technologically makes a ton of sense, – how else would we be able to accomplish all of the things we need to? – I don’t think I ever coherently thought about just how much of an impact theatre can have on the world in a form other than artistically. For some reason, my thought has mostly been that theatre takes the technology out there and repurposes it in a way that is more useful in order to accomplish whatever the goal is. This article made me re-evaluate that thought, and think more about how we really do make innovations because it is the best way we can think of to advance the story that we are trying to tell on the stage.
The article goes on to talk about how operas have been a starting place for advancing modern technology for decades, something I never realized. Ten years before the first radion station, a full opera was radio broadcasted. Opera had been brought into houses using telephone wires before then. Mark Schubin, a historian, also makes mention of how the original patents for movies were in order to broadcast opera.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/06/142018443/how-opera-helped-create-the-modern-media-world
