VR Spectacle at the Chur Theatre: Digital Freischütz

The artist collective CyberRäuber is showing their virtual reality opera project "Digital Freischütz" for the first time in Switzerland in Chur.

Suddenly Max from Freischütz is standing directly opposite you: At Theater Chur, this can be experienced through VR glasses. At Theater Chur, you can immerse yourself in the world of Max, Kaspar, Agathe and Ännchen. Right into the "Freischütz", this romantic "first German national opera", composed by Carl Maria von Weber in 1820 and premiered with incredible success in 1821. The two media artists Björn Lengers and Marcel Karnapke alias CyberRäuber have turned it into a virtual reality opera. In 2019, their "Digital Freischütz" celebrated its premiere at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, and has since made guest appearances at ten locations, from Berlin to Bangkok - and now in Chur.

Last year they could not have imagined that their opera would be the project of the hour in times of pandemic. Lengers and Karnapke have been working on their "Theatre of Virtual Reality" since 2015 - and have thus created a completely new art form. Their projects - they are currently working on their twelfth virtual production - move at the interface between game, theatre and virtual reality spectacle. And thus open up completely new perspectives.

You fly through sounds and spaces

With VR goggles on your face, headphones on your ears and the joystick in your hand, you move through the virtual worlds they create. You fly through sounds and spaces. For their "Freischütz" they created four 15-minute episodes, one for each of the four protagonists Max, Kaspar, Agathe and Ännchen. Björn Lengers and Marcel Karnapke do not tell the "Freischütz" story linearly. The four protagonists, their motives, their joys, their fears are approached in fragments.

You follow a kind of DNA strand that winds itself into a huge wreath - a wreath of the dead, as if woven from dead roots. Later you manoeuvre through a huge labyrinth, there is no exit. Then you are in a house whose roof and walls are made of sparkling stars. You dive into the sounds, into the worlds - plunge down into the flame-red underground beneath the house, float out through the walls into a forest of lights, Weber's music disappears, a queasy droning grows louder the further you move away from the house. That suddenly becomes smaller and smaller and smaller until it has disappeared altogether.

The perfect illusion is not their goal, says Björn Lengers. They don't want to build perfect worlds, but tell a story. He is delighted when people find contact through this "Freischütz", opera lovers to VR technology, digital enthusiasts to opera. And: this Digital Freischütz is also absolutely suitable for virtual reality novices.

Even operas are forced by the pandemic to find digital solutions. The Augsburg Theatre, for example, also worked with VR, as we reported. There are still a few performances in Chur until the end of the month. More Info

Source: tagblatt