Produced by Michael Roth, THE WEB OPERA was selected as a finalist in the category of Artistic Creation in the 2023 Awards for Digital Excellence.

Watch the video and learn more about the work and its producers below. Video available to stream free for a limited time through March 4, 2024.

With THE WEB OPERA, composer Michael Roth has assembled a team of progressive artists to create a groundbreaking new episodic opera — a through-sung web series based on true events — that has been honored by 35 film festivals. Filmed as if seen via laptop, iPhone, or iPad, with dazzling motion graphics by the Emmy Award-winning Crazybridge, THE WEB OPERA tells of a group of college freshmen and the invasion of privacy that forever changes their lives, its depiction compelling the viewer to violate the privacy of the characters themselves. By examining ourselves in such a unique way, with “high-voltage music combined with ensemble beauty … we are reminded how much humans have become dependent on and addicted to this technology. The close-up claustrophobic shots exacerbate this hard truth.” THE WEB OPERA, inspired by the tragedy of Tyler Clementi, supports suicide prevention and fights cyber abuse via links on our website; it is presented for free online to help our most vulnerable and all those at risk.

ABOUT THE PRODUCERS

Michael Roth, a composer whose work has been called “music one could imagine Ives composing had he lived long enough to encounter rock-and-roll and beat poetry,” is pleased to have gained recognition and awards for his recent work in new opera and experimental music/theater, including IMAGINATION DEAD IMAGINE, his music/theater treatment of Samuel Beckett's text, authorized by Beckett, for string quartet, recorded voices, and laptop, seen in Los Angeles and Prague; THE GOLEM OF LA JOLLA, an opera-in-progress examining contemporary anti-semitism; and THE WEB OPERA, his sung-through web series streaming at thewebopera.com, composed and self-produced to support suicide prevention and raise awareness of cyber abuse. An official selection at 35 film festivals, it was recently screened at the 2021 New Music Gathering and 2022 Culver City Festival, winning Best Experimental Short.

His additional work as a composer, sound artist, music director, and arranger includes chamber music; music for film, dance, and PBS; and especially music and sound for over 250 productions at theaters throughout North America, including Broadway, off-Broadway, and Canada's Stratford Festival, and as a resident artist at South Coast Repertory and La Jolla Playhouse. His recent projects include: with Tom Hanks, Henry IV in Los Angeles; with Christopher Plummer, The Tempest, onstage and filmed; two U.S. premieres with Tom Stoppard; with Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, The Last Words of Uncle Dirt(Playwright's Horizons, with Wu Man on pipa); accompanying singers from Marni Nixon to Alicia Keys; work with MacArthur Fellows Peter Sellars and Sarah Ruhl; many collaborations with Randy Newman, including music direction for Disney's The Princess and the Frog; and a solo Shakespeare project with Al Pacino. Roth studied composition with William Bolcom, taught sound design at UCSD, and has two upcoming premieres as part of the 2023 California Festival: SHEETCAKE, for four pianos and toy piano, and KYRIE-MERCY-ANA M, a motet for eight voices.

The Awards for Digital Excellence in Opera are supported by The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.