Īnd if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. Whether we’ll still be as enthralled once the pandemic is finally over, we’ll have to wait and see. “I believe that the drive-in experience will be here to stay and continue to thrive because people are now remembering how wonderful it is.”Īlways a cult favourite, the story of the drive-in is getting an unexpected sequel in 2020. “I grew up going to drive-ins and those are some of my most fond childhood memories,” he tells BBC Culture. Now it’s time for our generation to take the difficult and really find things in it that enrich our audiences, and inspire going forward in a positive way.”Īs for the more traditional drive-in, as cinemas slowly reopen again, can they still hold our interest? One person confident in their future is filmmaker Spencer Folmar, who plans to open what he says will be the world’s largest drive-in in Florida. “So many of the masterpieces that we take for granted only happened through really difficult situations. She believes times of crises have always been the catalyst for great moments in culture, and now is no different. Drive and Live is something we’re investing in as a long-term vision for how opera can hit parts of the UK and different types of audience.” “We’ve had huge interest from right across the country to take it on tour. For her, a drive-in show offers the chance to do something she was planning to do anyway – take live opera out of London and to places that don’t normally get to experience it. The ENO’s Annilese Miskimmon sees things differently – for opera, at least. You find all sorts of imaginative solutions, and there were a number of liberating actions I could take that you usually cannot have, like blowing a video up to 11m on a billboard.” “We were confronted with this giant space, but in a car it’s a similar scale to a human inside a museum space. “At the beginning, I was afraid it could have been seen as a gimmick but as the process unfolded, and the car became the solution and not the starting point, it became very interesting,” co-curator Francesco Stocchi tells BBC Culture. Thirty cars could drive in at a time (entrance was restricted to electric vehicles only, but there were ones available to loan for those who needed them) and see more than 50 works – including five new commissions and others specially adapted for the new setting. In Rotterdam, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen – currently closed for refurbishment – teamed up with convention centre Ahoy to run a drive-through museum during August in the 10,000 sq m arena. It’s given a whole energy to both the company and the creatives working on it.”įor such a classic concept, the drive-in is being subverted in all sorts of ways – not least in the art world. “It’s going to be a completely original take on La Bohème, an immersive experience where the audience will feel part of a larger story,” Miskimmon tells BBC Culture. ![]() The audience will watch from the safety of their cars and listen on individual Bluetooth speakers as singers and orchestra members put on a socially distanced performance unlike any they’ve done before. ![]() Within weeks the ENO had announced Drive & Live, a production of Puccini’s La Bohème in the grounds of London’s Alexandra Palace, running across eight days from 19 September. The film that exposed our misogynistic culture “Everyone stopped for a minute, then immediately they went into talking about how we can make it happen,” she says. On a Zoom call with her new colleagues – most of whom she’s still never met in person – she suggested a drive-in opera. Theatres were closed indefinitely, and the outlook for 2020 seemed bleak. In March, the ENO had just opened a new production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro when they were forced to halt performances in London’s Coliseum, and cancel not just that run – but their entire season. Miskimmon joined the company this spring, just as the UK went into lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus. She just never expected she’d have to do it quite so quickly. When Annilese Miskimmon got the job as the new artistic director of the English National Opera, her remit was to broaden opera’s appeal and come up with new ways for audiences to experience it.
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