Opera Streaming Revolution: Boston Baroque, IDAGIO, And GBH Music Unveil Digital Innovation For Global Audiences

By: Christos A. Makridis

On the heels of its 50 year anniversary, Boston Baroque, in partnership with IDAGIO and GBH Music, premiered an incredible series of performances on April 20th of the opera Iphigénie en Tauride by Christoph Willibald Gluck with a digital streaming and will remain available for $9 per stream until May 21st. Under the musical direction of Martin Pearlman and leadership of Jennifer Ritvo Hughes, Boston Baroque has become a leading cultural institution and innovator.

Technological innovation in classical music

Although all sectors were adversely affected by the onset of Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns, none were more affected than arts and entertainment with over a 50% decline in employment between February 15 and April 25 2020, which remained in decline well into the summer and 2021, according to research published by the Brookings Institution. The same phenomenon held across other developed countries, according to the OECD. The loss in employment led to a significant deterioration in mental health and well-being among performers and other workers in cultural institutions, according to professors Samantha Brooks and Sonny Patel in a 2022 article published in Social Sciences & Humanities Open.

However, some cultural institutions responded to these challenges with substantial innovation. Following the onset of Covid-19, Boston Baroque began working with GBH – the leading multiplatform public media producer in America – to digitally stream performances across the world. GBH Music became a production collaborator and presenter of Boston Baroque, among other celebrated music organizations, allowing for a continuation of musical performances. Even though there was an overall increase in streaming of performances, GBH Music was unique, most notably with their excellent production quality, resembling an in-person experience as much as possible.

"When GBH Music first met with Boston Baroque to explore the presentation of opera in our Calderwood Studio, we agreed that the goal was to find a new, innovative way to present these amazing works by taking advantage of the technology and talents we have at our disposal. And the results have been exceptional. The in-studio and on-line experiences bring audiences closer to the music, to the singers, and helps breathe new life into this centuries-old music. The visual and aural connection between artists and audiences is unique. Seeing musical talent, stunning production values, high-quality audio all come together to benefit opera, is thrilling,” said Anthony Rudel, General Manager of GBH Music.

Now that in-person performances have resumed, digital streaming has become a complement, rather than a substitute, for Boston Baroque, enlarging their reach and strengthening their world-renown brand as a staple cultural institution. “The arts often don’t place enough value on how people want to consume what we have to offer—we miss out on key opportunities to grow revenue and reach… In a traditional performing arts business model, the opportunity for return on investment ends when the concert downbeat begins due to a bias for in-person performance. At Boston Baroque, we’ve used digital innovation to disrupt this core business model constraint, providing unique to market, compelling content that consumers value,” said Jennifer Ritov Hughes, the Executive Director of Boston Baroque.

Economists have long pointed towards technology as the primary driver of productivity growth in society, but whether it translates into improvements in well-being and flourishing depends on whether and how society integrates technology as a complement, not substitute, to humans.

“Through partnerships with GBH, IDAGIO, and others, we’ve built a model for developing and delivering content that audiences are asking for, while paying artists for their work in the digital concert hall. A reviewer once called what we do an ‘authentically hybrid experience,’ where we simultaneously deliver in person programming while capturing digital content of a high enough quality to monetize and distribute on platforms with a global reach… One year after going digital, our market grew from 4,000 regional households to 35,000 households in the US and the UK. At the close of our 22/23 season, we now have audiences in 55 countries on 6 continents and counting. We’re just beginning to explore the potential of digital—many possibilities lie ahead,” Hughes continued.

“When I founded Boston Baroque 50 seasons ago, it was the first period-instrument orchestra in North America, and so it was quite an experiment. Everything that has come since then—being the first period-instrument orchestra to perform in Carnegie Hall, being nominated for 6 GRAMMY® Awards for our recordings, and now streaming our concerts on six continents—has been the wonderful and unexpected outcome of a simple desire to make music in a free and authentic way,” said Martin Pearlman, the Founding Music Director.

Iphigénie En Tauride

Iphigénie en Tauride is a drama of the playwright Euripides written between 414 BC and 412 BC, detailing the mythological account of the young princess who avoided death by sacrifice at the hands of her father Agamemnon thanks to the Greek goddess, Artemis, who intervened and replaced Iphigenia on the altar with a deer. Now a priestess at the temple of Artemis in Tauris, she is responsible for ritually sacrificing foreigners who come into the land. The opera revolves around her forced ritualistic responsibility on the island, coupled with an unexpected encounter with her brother, Orestes, who she had thought was dead.

Led by stage director Mo Zhou and conductor Martin Pearlman, Soula Parassidis, a Greek-Canadian dramatic soprano, played the title role of Iphigénie on April 20, 21, and 23 in Boston, accompanied by an outstanding cast of distinguished international artists, including William Burden, Jesse Blumberg, David McFerrin, and Angela Yam, among others. The performance has amassed a wide arrow of glowing reviews.

Because the same opera is replayed many times over even within the same year, stage directors bear significant responsibility to bring a new perspective each time, particularly in an era with limited attention spans. “The classical music field is going through a schismatic change right now. As a practitioner and an educator, I ask myself and my students this question everyday: “In the age of Netflix and Hulu, how can we make our art form more accessible?” We’ve been putting ourselves on a high pedestal for a long time. If we do not adapt, we will gradually lose touch with the new generation of audiences, said Mo Zhou, the Stage Director.

In contrast to the more regietheater style where the director is encouraged to diverge from the original intentions of the playwright or operatist, this production stayed true to its roots, featuring Iphigénie in a beautiful gown and highlighting the intense pain that Iphigénie felt when she was asked to continue a sacrifice to the gods and subsequent intense joy when she discovered her brother, Orestes, was alive.

“I found this process of working on Iphigénie en Tauride with Boston Baroque, GBH and IDAGIO extremely fulfilling and refreshing. I think this production has presented a feasible formula where we keep the unique experience of the “live” performance, but also capture the ephemeral moments on stage and make it available to a broader audience across the world… In addition to thinking about the character building, stage composition and visual design like a conventional stage production, I also incorporated the notion of camera angles into my pre-blocking and design process, which shows in our end result. It demands a lot of advanced planning and the clarity of your dramatic and visual intention. It’s a beautiful collaboration between myself and our livestream director, Matthew Principe,” Zhou continued.

Future of the arts and the metaverse

IDAGIO has pioneered an incredible service for classical music and the performing arts, giving thousands more people across the world access to top-tier performances. “We are offering the infrastructure to any partner who is interested in sharing media content with audiences online. Recording and producing a concert is one thing. Distributing them and making them available to committed audiences around the world is another. That’s what we enable and what we love to do,” said Till Janczukowicz, CEO and Founder of IDAGIO.

The response to opening up in-person performances to digital audiences has been overwhelming. “IDAGIO has over 50,000 reviews on the App store averaging 4,7 / 5 stars. Users and artists love IDAGIO for many reasons, also because of our fair pay-out model: we remunerate by second and per user. This is as fair as you can get in audio streaming,” continued. In many ways, digital streaming of performances is an early use-case of metaverse applications that aim to provide users with more immersive experiences and connectivity between physical and digital assets.

While we have yet to see many truly immersive and fully-fledged metaverse use-cases, there is substantial interest from consumers and metaverse companies alike, particularly for changing the way that people engage with the arts by giving artists a more experiential mechanism of performing for and connecting with their audience.

“Rapper Royce 5’9” is a great example of this. Even with a successful 20-year career under his belt, he has sought out better platforms to engage with aspiring artists and his community. With Passage, he’s creating a beautiful 3D space called the Heaven Experience to host exclusive songwriting and studio sessions, interviews with music industry veterans, live performances, and more. These types of interactions simply wouldn’t be possible on something like a Zoom call or traditional livestream,” said Caleb Applegate, CEO of Passage.

During an era of intense technological change, the arts plays a more important role than ever and technology has the potential to augment, not replace, in-person performances.