A Very Special Announcement On The Day Of Die Fledermaus Premiere

April 5th is a very special date in the history of European music, and specifically Operetta!

On that day in 1874 Die Fledermaus by J. Strauss, which is perhaps the most popular operetta

in the world, premiered in Vienna!

On this date we at IOC are very proud to make this special announcement.

We are very excited to be up for a Telly Award in the category of excellence in remote production for our wonderful production of "Watch Duet!" As far as we can tell, IOC was the very first opera company IN THE WORLD to produce a 100% remotely produced and performed opera-related production complete with virtual set-piece, animation, and music. We included all aspects that would go into an actual live opera production. Work started on our "Watch Duet" a year ago - at the very start of the pandemic when the run of our live performance production of "Die Fledermaus" was cut short because of the prohibition on live performances. This short hybrid art form (not quite film, and not quite live performance), a new art form, really, took Aaron Ball and his company Command virFormance (CvF) three months to develop! What a perfect contender for the brand new Telly Awards category of Remote Production!! Our wonderful soprano, Luisa Fernanda Torres was in Clifton, NJ; our fantastic tenor, Luke Norvell was in Tacoma, WA, our pianist and music director, Galina Barskaya was playing from her home in North Hollywood, and our fabulous director, Aaron Ball, took on the seemingly IMPOSSIBLE task of stage directing from his home in Long Beach. Liza Barskaya was our incredibly talented visual consultant for this production that has almost 90k views on social media! Congratulations to EVERYONE involved in the making of this video - we could not have done it without you and your talents! THANK YOU!!