Giacomo Puccini conquered the whole world with his music. His operas have been among the world’s most frequently performed works for over 100 years without interruption. The timeless, emotional Puccini sound continues to inspire and touch people to this day.
Puccini celebrated his greatest successes at a time of revolutionary media innovations. The development of new entertainment technology, first and foremost film and sound recordings, which soon became widespread, represented a revolution for society and musical culture in the early 20th century, and fundamentally challenged the traditional business model of musical theater. It multiplied the distribution of dramatic music and popularized it to an unprecedented extent within just a few years.
The OPERA MEETS NEW MEDIA – Puccini, Ricordi and the Rise of the Modern Entertainment Industry exhibition seeks to track down the secret of this unprecedented success. It tells of the disruptive forces of new media and their impact; of how the artist Puccini and his publisher Ricordi used these times of upheaval to build an international star with the help of modern marketing campaigns; but also of how fundamentally contemporary developments changed the opera business forever.
The exhibition itself is designed as a media production and presents the highly topical subject in several audiovisual installations, from a 3D model of a Puccini portrait to AI animation of period stage sets. Numerous original documents from the Archivio Storico Ricordi, which belongs to Bertelsmann, will also be on display. The accompanying publication “Opera meets New Media,” edited by chief curator Gabriele Dotto, is available in bookstores.