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Enhanced Opera Replaces Physical Sets With Digital Projections

For opera, 'The Cunning LIttle Vixen,' creative studio Walter Robot created giant animated characters to sync with a live orchestra.

The Cunning LIttle Vixen is an opera composed by Leoš Janáček in the early 20th century, a magical love story between two foxes which took its inspiration from a Czech newspaper comic strip. It was performed earlier this year by conductor Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra, and directed by artistic director Yuval Sharon, who introduced a digital twist into the set and character design courtesy of Walter Robot studios—a.k.a., Bill Barminski and Christopher Louie.

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The set design differed from that of a standard opera because all that sat on stage behind the orchestra were three 30' x 16' white screens with portal holes cut into them; animations were projected onto the screens to serve as virtual sets.

The Cunning LIttle Vixen.'  Image: via

The idea behind the holes was similar to the head-in-the-hole character cutouts found at theme parks and carnivals. Performers stuck their heads through and "wore" the projected costumes while performing as the various characters.

"The opera itself is 90 minutes in duration. Very quickly we realized that we were basically making a feature-length animated film in about five months," notes Barminski. "What is more, this film has to be composited and cued live. You can't just hit play. The conductor sets the pace."

Projected sets from 'The Cunning LIttle Vixen.'  Images: via

Walter Robot's animations have a simple, lo-fi, almost childlike quality. They serve as a nod to the origins of the opera while also bringing an otherworldliness to the visuals—and whether they meant to or not, also reference the BBC's 2003 animated production of the show. The animations were the result of building 3D cardboard models—creating a sense of depth—which would then be projected in 2D in a sort of reversal of standard set design.

When creating the animations, the team had to keep in mind the fact that characters' movements needed to be responsive to the live music. "All of the animation has to be created so that it can loop and/or end sooner. Each of the characters must be created with multiple action loops so that they can be composited live by the technical supervisor," Barminski says.

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Image: via

The rhythm and form of these loops had to ultimately take their structure from Janáček's composition. "Creatively the key to this piece is the music," explains Barminski. "But getting inside the head of Janáček and looking for the emotive core took some time. After letting it soak in one can begin to feel the presence of the artistic spirit. Janáček makes a philosophical argument about man's place in nature, a meditation on the beauty of nature and how we interact with it. The opera looks at the cycle of life and basically says it's both beautiful and tragic."

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Click here to learn more about the Cleveland Orchestra's tech-enhanced production of The Cunning LIttle Vixen. 

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