Virtual Museum

The Boris Christoff Virtual Museum

۩ The Vocal and Artistic Heritage of the unique Art of Boris Christoff | ♪♫ ♪♫

The development team, working on this project, is based in the native land of Orpheus – Bulgaria, the country that has given the world a range of prominent opera singers: Boris Christoff, Elena Nicolai, Todor Mazaroff, Luba Velich, Nicolai Giaurov, Raina Kabaivanska, Ghena Dimitrova, Anna Tomova-Sintov, Vesselina Kasarova, etc. The original objective was to increase the awareness of their musical perfection and unique contribution to world’s vocal and artistic culture among people in Bulgaria and around the globe by means of a comprehensive digital multi-media collection Orpheus.BG.

The immediate goal set was creation and distribution of its first module – “The Musical World of Boris Christoff”, encompassing the life and art of one of the world’s greatest classical singers in the context of close collaboration with other outstanding musicians of the 20th century, such as his co-star singers Callas, Tebaldi, Corelli, di Stefano, Bastianini, Gobbi and conductors Serafin, Gui, Dobrowen, Santini, Giulini, de Sabata, Votto, Furtwängler, Karajan.

The European Opera Virtual Museum

Having completed the second version of this highly structured art-information product in commemoration of the 95th anniversary (18th of May 2009) of his birth, we look forward to changing its emphasis and dramatically expanding its scope to include the whole history of the European opera during the second half of 20th century – the historical period after World War II, featuring an extraordinary rise in the operatic performance quality. To this end, its cultural context is gradually being extended to form the foundation of the future European Opera Virtual Museum.

We do not see this opera virtual museum as just another (electronic) version of a set of books, reviews, CDs, etc. We aim at reaching beyond the conventional structuring of the factual material in order for revealing the intrinsic aesthetic value of the underlying drama (libretto) and music (score) that logically underpins each specific opera performance – a unique event, invoking thoughts and emotions and leaving unique impressions.

Our iConceptStore^™ based software and language platform enables sophisticated multi-facet approach to modular structuring of the relevant information, directly represented in the specific individual terms of the corresponding opera world concepts. Apart from its extreme simplicity and flexibility (openness to changes), this natural paradigm also allows for impartial accommodation of different (even partially overlapping, inconsistent and/or contradicting) cultural and aesthetic views. Grounded upon the same set of facts across singers, conductors, directors, composers, opera works, orchestras, etc., any such view might provide essential wider historical context to each other. To this end, we intend to bring to the forefront any known, possibly conflicting, conscious artistic visions of the different participants and only use the resulting performance as an illustration in the background.

This deep semantic structure would be one of the main distinctions of this collection. Conceptual clusters of related information components would provide the necessary context in order for all aspects of any given detail to be understood correctly and comprehensively. This would be achieved by breaking down large existing information sources (books, films, interviews, records, letters, photos, scores, etc.) into a multiplicity of small self-contained meaningful fragments in the appropriate digital form (formatted text, voice, sound, image, video, etc.). Along with other small items, dispersed among many different journals, these building blocks would be analysed and classified to reveal and reflect any implicit semantic relations between them. They would be then re-composed accordingly to form a complex dynamic net of inter-related subsets of associated information components. Navigating among these loosely connected information islands, freely selecting the type and degree of detailization of the information as required, should provide for a wonderful experience.

Thanks to these prior methodological and technological provisions, the main efforts can be now concentrated solely on the collection, analysis and structuring of the huge amount of information, extracted from many different sources available. It is obvious that the information volume of such a comprehensive coverage would multiply substantially, compared to its current levels, along with its logical structure becoming far more complex and elaborate. The collection and structuring of the relevant factual, artistic and musical material would represent a substantial effort over a long period. This makes the implementation of the project with the intended exceptional comprehensive coverage and depth described only possible in close collaboration with suitable partners.

Strategic partnerships and working relationships are currently being established with individuals (e.g., authors of books) and organizations (owners of intellectual property rights among them) in Italy and elsewhere. Bearing in mind that the actual story of the European opera consists of the collective chronicles of the leading opera houses in Europe (such as La Scala, Milan, Wiener Staatsoper, Grand Opera de Paris and ROHCG, London), we invite those institutions to join our effort in a Europe-wide consortium thus facilitating the reflection of facts and events of their particular history within the above mentioned period as an integral part of The European Opera Virtual Museum envisaged.

Currently, the Boris Christoff Virtual Museum digital multi-media collection contains information resources predominantly in Bulgarian. In order to provide for a much wider distribution, the expanded European Opera Virtual Museum should comprise the main body of its information resources in English, only optionally switching to the original language (Italian, French, German, etc.) of the corresponding opera work.

This project (currently self-funded) is expected to remain open in the process of continuous updating and structural refinement for as long as new information and analytical views become available. We believe that our effort would inevitably result in a very interesting and innovative art-information product, which is expected to generate significant interest among libraries and art information services organizations around the world, due to its exceptional comprehensive coverage and depth as well as the innovative form of organization and presentation of the factual, artistic and musical material. Another distinguishing feature would be its provision of an overall integral view of the European opera by impartially consolidating relevant (though some times inconsistent) information from many different sources (perhaps reflecting objects, impossible to put together at any one physical museum).

In addition to specialist research activities in the areas of performing arts history and techniques, this product could also be used for general and art education purposes as a powerful dynamic information/photo/audio/video illustration aid to lecturers as well as in the course of self-education. Ultimately, presenting intriguing information in acoustically enriched easy to assimilate visual displays, it could contribute to the current strive for making this art form part of the popular culture once again thus getting people back to all those one-time famous opera houses.