The Royal Opera House (ROH) has made its first foray into the online gaming market, releasing a new app of mini games about its opera and ballet performances.Available for Apple operating system devices like the iPhone, The Show Must Go On features five mini games that see the user play the role of stage manager.
Players must manage lighting, props and set building for ROH productions of The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker and choose outfits for the chorus. All the while, they must race to gather lost sheet music ahead of the curtain going up.
The show is then performed in animation and is either a success or a failure, depending on how well the stage manager has coped.
Players will also get a taste of classical music while playing the app, with recordings from the operas and ballets and sound effects recorded on location at the Covent Garden venue.
“The Holy Grail is something commercially viable that can reach lots of people. We hope that this game will excite people who don’t know about opera and ballet,” commented Tony Hall, chief executive of ROH.
He added that the move of the ROH into gaming brings together different players in the UK’s creative industries, explaining that it is a “logical step … as we increasingly develop our content available across multiple digital platforms”.
It is not the first time that the opera house has launched an Apple app. It has a free ticketing app with CloudTix that allows users to buy tickets for productions straight from their iPhone, share information on performances through Facebook and Twitter and access images, videos and podcasts relating to ROH shows.
West End stage show We Will Rock You also has its own mobile game. Users act as the show’s producer who must take the musical from a school hall to London’s Dominion Theatre and sell out the show.