Paris (AFP)

What is the difference between a baritone and a tenor? What exactly does a conductor do? The Paris Opera launches "Aria", a mobile site for popularizing opera and dance.

The announcement is certainly in full containment but it is a project that should have seen the light of day in January. It was finally postponed due to an unprecedented strike by Opera staff against the reform of the pension system, to which was added paralysis due to the coronavirus which led to the cancellation, from March 9 to 7 April, 30 shows.

At a time when the consumption of content in digital form is in full swing, the site will be accessible from Thursday in French and English, in France and worldwide, on mobile phones and tablets.

With the slogan "The Opera is nothing classic", it wants to be a mini-encyclopedia supposed to give the keys to a lyrical art often considered elitist. A bit like some educational books, but in an interactive version.

"The ambition is to open a digital, interactive, fun window on the world of opera and ballet", says AFP Martin Ajdari, the deputy director general of the institution.

"The difficulty for the opera to widen its audience is the perception that it is a closed world, which has its codes, that + it is not for me +", he indicates.

For him, the target audience is "one who is curious, familiar with digital uses but intimidated by this world".

- What does "range" mean? -

Free, the site (https://aria.operadeparis.fr/fr) offers in a playful tone three means of interactive discovery: "I let myself be guided", "I want to explore the themes" or "I have a question" .

Where does the word ballet come from? What is the name of Rossini's opera, where we find the characters from a play by Beaumarchais? What is the difference between a light soprano and a dramatic soprano? : the answers to the various questions are accompanied by an audio extract, a text and / or an explanatory video.

There appear the owner of the Opera Stéphane Lissner, the musical director Philippe Jordan, the director of the Opera Ballet Aurélie Dupont and many house artists such as musicians explaining their instruments, choir artists or technicians.

Thus Marianne Croux, a soprano from the Opera Academy - who is in charge of the transmission of different trades - explains that the word soprano comes from the word "sopra" (above in Italian); it is therefore a singer who sings with a higher voice than a mezzo-soprano or a viola.

The site, whose content will be continuously enriched, then gives the possibility of listening to these different ranges of voices.

For dance, he presents focus on choreographers, questions on the differences between classical and contemporary, exercises in recognition of ballet music, or explanations by Elisabeth Platel, director of the Dance School. which details the teaching of the little rats of the Opera.

The site is not limited to the exclusive world of opera: in the "crossover" section, we discover the links between the lyric world and other modes of artistic expression, such as cinema, electro music, pop culture ...

Which Italian director has made four operas? asks "Aria" which also explains how the leitmotif, a process dear to Wagner, was used in the music of Star Wars.

The project - initially led by Mr. Ajdari's predecessor, Jean-Philippe Thiellay, who became director of the new National Music Center in January - benefited from the patronage of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, and was carried out in partnership with the consulting firm in digital transformation Keyrus.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, "Aria" uses a chatbot to interact with the user and to offer personalized content when he makes subsequent connections.

© 2020 AFP