Moreover the new media are suitable for the transmission of a content intrinsically multimedia. Opera, ballet and music are expressive languages related to different perceptual spheres and that adopt different means of expression: literary text, sound, human voice, mimicry, gestures, costumes, scenography.
These arguments apply for any theatre performance but our attention has been driven to the Teatro alla Scala, which is an important historical theatre for the Italian melodrama, based in Milano and very popular among citizen.
The access to the theatre via the Web offers two perspectives: the building with its architecture and the theatre in its function. The building itself is interesting; it has been designed by Piermarini at the end of the XVIII century, after a fire that destroyed the older Regio Teatro Ducale, whose seasons started in 1589. It shows a plant and an architecture that influenced the following theatres, in Italy and in the rest of Europe, in those days and in the next century. For the virtual visit of the building two technologies have been chosen: namely QuickTime® VR and VRML 2.0. The Web site provides the necessary mean to communicate how the theatre works in terms of its program, its performances history, as well as how a particular performance is staged.
The web site provides historical information on the theatre, a multimedia presentation of the season, access to the theatre database, news from the press office, biographies of artists, mailboxes, ticket office information, news about audits and a virtual shop.
The events are presented to the general public on a day-to-day base, as the calendar evolves. The performances are documented by giving the program, the subject, the performing cast of the day, pictures taken from the stage documenting artists and the scenography, audio or video clips, pictures of costumes and their sketches. Often the web site offer the complete list of discography and bibliographic references.
The theatre manages a database that is used for internal administrative purposes. The web interfaces the information that are interesting to the public about performances held in the theatre as far as 1953. One can query about an author, an opera or a specific artist; one can also read about the orchestra composition and compare with present days choices. To this respect the Teatro alla Scala is the first theatre to allow consultation of its archive via the network and the service has been welcomed by users, who in this case are not only opera fans but also researchers and scholars.
The virtual shop opened quite recently and it sells books edited by the theatre, together with programs of performances, photos and videos.
During these past two years, since it started to be operative, the web site has proved to be an important channel of communication between the theatre and its public. Mails, that in the beginning were mainly general compliments or to point out mistakes, are now used to ask more precise questions and show a high and focused level of interest. Often mails are sent by scholars searching for information about historical performances or news about artists.
QTVR is perfectly suited to give a synthetic view of a complex environment, by provoking a powerful sensation of the outlook of the environment. The public can "navigate" in the space by selecting viewpoints, panning and zooming. To change the context links can be activated to display another interior of the theatre. The intrinsic QTVR nature, based on the so called "image rendering technique", both offers an advantage from the perceptual viewpoint, because it conveys a better feeling to the observer, being based on photographs shots, and also a limit for the perception of the structural complexity of the real space.
A better reconstruction of the space is achieved by VRML: the model with photografic textures (800 Kb. VRML plug-ins are required, as CosmoPlayer); the same model with no textures, (22Kb. VRML plug-ins are required). In this case a 3D model of the theatre can be constructed and displayed at different level of details and quality: from simple wire frame or smooth shading up to textured images that can reach the same quality of display as QTVR: a snapshot of the external of the theatre, as from the square. On the other hand VRML, even in the case when photos are textured on the surfaces, gives a somewhat "cartoon" effect. The VRML models, on the other hand, can be more interactive than QTVR, in particular animation can be programmed, audio can be activated to convey better cues of the acoustic space and light effects can be simulated.
QTVR is less expensive, takes less time to develop, and its transmission over the net is cheaper, because the transmitted files are in average smaller. VRML, on the contrary, is more expensive, because it requires longer time to create and structure a 3D model, and the optimization of the 3D model for effective Internet browsing is still critical. Both technologies can be made available for low cost computer platforms, but efficient VRML modelling is better done on high end graphics workstations.
A sequence of snap shots has been taken to reconstruct a possible visit of the theatre starting from the square, in which the theatre is located, namely Piazza della Scala. The 360deg. node that have been implemented allow panoramical views from different view points, from the stalls and the balconies, from the foyer and from the stage. A node located in the proscenio (450Kb, QuickTime plug-ins are required). Pictures taken from the node of the stalls and from that one of the stage.
Hotspots are implemented in the node to reference external documents, giving more details in text or photo formats about the theatre. A node from the stage gives the unusual perspective of the scenery seen from the back looking at the stalls, and from there hotspots will lead users to more information about the scene.
The final VRML model can be visited by the public in two ways: by direct
interactive navigation or by executing pre-programmed visits and animation.
Starting from
Moreover, to explain the theatre "machina" movements of the scenes are
animated, making the virtual experience different and more complete than the
actual one;
a model of a scenographic setting (27Kb. VRML plug-ins required). In fact usually spectator do not fully appreciate the complexity of
the process of putting on stage a performance and have no idea of the back
stage.
Shenchang E. C., QuickTime® VR - An image based approach to virtual
environment animation. Computer Graphics, proc. SIGGRAPH `95, ACM, pp.
29-38
Ames A. L., Nadeau D. R. and Moreland J. L., VRML 2.0 sourcebook,
Wiley New-York 1997
Acknowledgements
The web site is a service offered by the Press Office of the Teatro alla Scala
di Milano, with funding provided by the Camera di Commercio, Industria,
Artigianato e Agricoltura di Milano. QuickTime® VR application has been
developed with the support of Apple Computer Italia, and the photos were taken
by Paolo Bonacina and Claudia Provenzano. We acknowledge the work of students
Emanuele Genuizzi, Paolo Maninetti, Daniele Pannuto, Diego Paroni.
References
Mitchell W. J., City of bits. Space, Place and Infobahn, M.I.T.
Press, Cambridge, MA - USA, 1996
