By Joey Bargsten, Florida Atlantic University

MelanchoLalaland™, our multimedia opera, is in full swing. Here’s a few of the lighting/staging sketches we prepared to visually explain the relationship of live performer to screen for the Miami venues we are currently pursuing.

The corporate-dystopia environment was built in Maya and Unity, and doubles as a set for central film-within-the-opera, Casual Sex Fridays™.

In other news, we’ve met our Knight Foundation Challenge, with the generous matching of FAU’s College Advisory Board Fund, an award from the Bailyn Fund for Faculty Research from School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, and a software contribution by Avid Inc., creators of Sibelius music notation software. Plus, I’ve been awarded a Scholarship and Creative Activities Fellowship for Spring 2015, for a two-course teaching release, so I’ll have more time to devote to the production.

Additionally, librettist Thea Zimmer and I have just returned from exploring possible venues in New York City and Brooklyn for a possible production in 2016 or 2017. We met with folks at Three-Legged Dog in lower Manhattan, and Gowanus, Lyceum, and Irondale Ensemble in Brooklyn. We also attended a performance of the contemporary multimedia opera Maria Celeste,

Next step: pre-production, video, orchestration, etc, all summer!

Melancholalaland™, a multimedia opera by Joey Bargsten with libretto by Thea Zimmer will be presented in Miami in 2015. It is being made possible in part through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and will include local singers and dancers in a live mix with video, animation, and digital music. Melancholalaland™ will bring elements of opera to a broader audience, exposing the South Florida arts community to newer forms of interactive media.

Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge funds ideas that help bring South Florida together through the arts. For more, visit KnightFoundation.org.