Opera 360: Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama’s new programme on the opera industry

Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD) have announced Opera 360, an online programme focusing on opera as a collaborative art, which is designed to help nurture innovation within the medium.

Starting in September 2022, the programme will be available as a postgraduate masters course, and each module will also be offered as an individual short course for anyone wanting to immerse themselves in the industry, whatever their stage of life. Students will receive insider guidance from industry experts focusing on different aspects of opera, including the roles of the director, actor, and designer as well as key offstage elements such as leadership and administration. The course will discuss the many critical issues facing the industry today and will exploring how opera can innovate and engage communities going forward.

I interviewed James Lea, the course leader for Opera 360 at RWCMD, to find out more about this unique course.

A course delivering practical knowledge through the eyes of industry insiders is certainly needed, but what was the motivation behind setting up the course from this particular perspective?

We wanted to look at opera not as a text but as the culmination of collaborative effort. We were invigorated by the idea of studying an opera through the lens of casting it, directing it, producing it, booking it, and marketing it as all these aspects of a performance are so important. Historically, many studies are focused on composers and their scores - we want to offer students the opportunity to focus on opera as an event.

For the masters students the course is a vital chance to really dig their teeth into something that, for all its longtime popularity and for all the words it has generated, still has many areas that need exploring. Of course, we will look at the music, and the drama, but through the eyes of the people who bring that music and drama to life rather than through an analytic lens.

Given the sort of collaboration we cultivate at the RWCMD, we are well-placed to offer a course in interdisciplinary practice as we can not only call on our industry contacts but also our in-house opera directors, designers, and musicians.

This course also presents an opportunity for employers in opera companies to recommend particular modules to their employees.

Why do you think this way of looking at the subject hasn’t been central to courses in the past?

There’s a lot of terrific scholarship, much of it recent, that approaches opera in the way I’m describing, but as far as I know there aren’t any courses that wholly commit to this way of looking at things, who look at Mozart, say, as part of a network. There’s such a rich body of literature on composers as lone creators that it’s tempting to continue down that same path. As a result, the diverse and practical skills that go into making something as necessarily collaborative as opera get lost in the habit of pinning the art on the single genius who conceived it.

Do you think that knowledge gained in this course of how the opera industry works would still be beneficial to people who are studying opera from a performance perspective?

Yes, we hope that these students will want to take our modules - we certainly don't imagine it to be exclusively for non-music students.

The modules are set up to appeal to different groups with different focuses including backstage roles, leadership, opera administration and the House system, as well as modules concentrating on particular roles like directors and actors.

Interdisciplinarity is vital in academia right now, but it's always been the ethos of RWCMD. We have a fantastic team throughout the various artistic disciplines both practical and artistic. And so, this course presents an opportunity for us to showcase all the wonderful talent we have in-house.

The masters program offers practical experience in the form of a final project, is that something that's also part of the short course format as well?

Yes, the course is structured so that students who choose the short course format can take the modules flexibly in any order they choose, and they all have substantial projects for their assessments. The only prerequisite is for the final project, where you would need to take the masters research skills module, but we anticipate many of our students would be able to test out of that with equivalent experience.

You can also take just one module independently, or you could build up to the masters or to other postgraduate certifications like a certificate (3 modules) or a diploma (6 modules). As a result, all the modules are accredited, with assessment points to test the practical skills the student will have developed.

What is the skill that you're most hoping to see out in the world as a result of this course?

That our students will help opera companies further develop their roles in the community. The power of opera to tell stories and to bring audiences together is unique. That reach is extraordinary and so we want our students to think about the different ways in which opera engages audiences. I believe this course will help students add to the innovation that's going on in the industry already.

On the other side, I would hope that students who are passionate about opera will see this course as a way to immerse themselves in it, to learn the nuts and bolts and details of how opera is made. I hope these students leave the course feeling that they had fully satisfied that desire for immersion.

What kind of roles do you think the course will prepare students for?

There will be some students who are professionals and are interested in developing their skills in this industry. Those students will leave with specific ideas about large projects and how to tackle them. The ethos of the course will lead all students to think about employing their skills for new commercial opportunities in the world of opera.

I think that students taking individual modules as short courses will still gain knowledge of the industry as a whole. For example, students on ‘The Director’ module will receive tuition from directors but will also be taught to see the director as a part of the company. Rather than developing craft, the modules focus on developing the kind of practical knowledge that will benefit students looking to step into a role within an opera company.

For students with some experience in a specific area, such as design, who would like to transition into opera, our modules will offer a specific focus on opera that wouldn’t be possible in a more general course in that area.

How do you feel opera has innovated during the Covid-19 pandemic?

Every aspect of life has changed but singing has been especially challenging. Those who make opera have had to figure out ways to adapt to a world that wasn’t imaginable two years ago. There are, of course, many companies that had already understood the need for substantial change. Companies are doing exciting things online and finding new ways to communicate the joy of opera and really embed it in the community.

I also hope that the opera world will continue to explore blurring boundaries with other contemporary musical forms – some of the best work out there employs styles that just a few years ago might not have been considered “operatic”.

By bringing together practitioners from all the different strands which contribute to an opera performance, the Opera 360 course offers the possibility for new ideas to germinate. This moment offers us an opportunity to highlight collaboration, which is one of the things that the arts need to be shouting about right now.

You can take part in a live Q&A with James Lea on Monday 6th December by emailing the RWCMD Admissions team: admissions@rwcmd.ac.uk.

As an online initiative Opera 360 will be available to people from all over the UK and internationally. This postgraduate course can be taken over two to five years with applications available through UCAS. You can find more information about the course, including details on how to apply at the RWCMD website.