Beyond the Audience Seat: The recording and production of immersive opera and interactive concerto programmes for VR experiences

New modes of expression have always defined a central attribute within the ambitions of classical music. The extended realities (XR) hold the potential to expand this expressive repertoire by transporting audiences into the middle of the action within an immersive music performance. We argue that implementing these innovative formats in contemporary opera performance, composition, production, and recording opens up new aesthetical paradigms that can reciprocally inform the artistic disciplines and reach a wider demographic of audiences. To our knowledge, this paper presents the first ever interactive virtual reality (VR) production of an entire opera, “She” (2017) and “Croak” (2018). The recordings devise 3-dimensional 360-degree high-resolution video and 3rd-order Ambisonics audio from multiple perspectives within a bespoke software interface. Following a discussion of both operas from the composer’s and engineer’s perspective, the paper will present an enhanced rendition of “CroakVR”, a 6-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) volumetric simulation of its corresponding opera, that raises the bar of interactivity by enabling audiences to freely explore various mimetic and diegetic perspectives of its staging. Furthermore, we discuss on-going work on “Climb!VR”, a 6DoF volumetric VR production devising multiple Ambisonics recordings of an interactive electro-acoustic piano concerto “Climb!” based on ludonarrative structures. It is argued that VR recordings can amend the life span of musical compositions by offering listeners a concert experience that can extend beyond the walls of the physical concert hall.