We Are You - An Investigation into intersections between Western Contemporary Opera and Online Fan Culture

Robin Fiedler

Finding an audience we can relate to, or bringing our social circle into our audience is still a struggle for most younger composers. With the Western classical opera audiences ageing and the attempts to bring younger audiences into opera houses and concert halls, we need to ask ourselves as composers who we write for, and how we reach these people. My opera Serenoid which had its premiere in September 2024 at Tête-à-Tête Festival in London came out of a niche space of queer and disabled geek culture in creative online fandom communities that I have been part of since I was a teenager. These groups are hardly engaged with classical music as a genre, their creative focus is on visual art and writing, mostly around an established pop-culture franchise, in this case Star Trek. Often decried as cringy, the spaces in which they move have been melting pots for many people outside of the narrow representation of mainstream media in search for community and belonging since the arrival of the internet. The decision to take Serenoid as a story from an obscure niche space on the internet to the opera stage attempts to speak to its members and therefore open the doors my own community to become part of the “opera audience”. My research describes the process and outcomes of this experiment and hopes to prove that as classical composers we can speak to younger and diverse audiences by openly and authentically being part of the group we write for.

IX. Conclusion

When I interviewed Nadiya, she noted: "There's a lot to be upset about in our current climate, and always in the world, but having a kind of creative fodder that serves, this is why we're doing the work, this is why we're engaging with our communities, this is why we're striving towards a certain kind of future.” This is how she described her motivation for bringing her ghosts of fanfictions past into her current artistic work. She further explained: "I think sci-fi is really that flame for a lot of folks, which is really exciting.(...) Sci-fi is the only genre we have that allows humanity to create a future together, that doesn’t yet exist. It's (...) the only genre that elaborates on our world and actually allows us to kind of – as a community create the future we want and I think that that power is really specific and really important to me."

With this research I hoped to engage new audiences in contemporary Western art music by showing that this music is written and made for and by people like them. I am convinced that by unlearning preconceptions - such as the element of elitism and the idea of the lone genius that introduces hierarchical separation between composers, performers and audiences—we will also learn that there are many people interested in experimental music. If, that is, they feel it is accessible and not just adjacent to them, and that it connects with their own life. Furthermore, this research explored the notion that expressing identity as a composer happens with the wish to be in relation with, rather than to be setting oneself apart from one’s audience.

In my opinion, in the case of Serenoid, the reach towards a younger, more diverse audience for contemporary opera was a successful first attempt. The majority in the audience did not have any significant connections with Western contemporary classical music. In the marketing run-up, groups of fan fiction writers, Star Trek fan groups and queer audiences were targeted and this was reflected in the audience demography. I also wrote to charities for blind people and although the response was enthusiastic this did not translate into attendance.

At the end of the day, the reason why fanfiction writers work so tirelessly is that we, the queers, the disabled people, the people of colour and everyone else who is only slowly beginning to see themselves on the screens of mainstream media, need fairytales. We weren’t ever given them, so we’re writing them ourselves, for ourselves and each other. These narratives are being written from authentic experiences, making them viable and important to us. It is vital that these voices be part of the creative process when it comes to representation on screen and stage, in order to appeal to the audience that they are wanting to reach. For me as an artist, this experience and the research connected to it has been vital to begin carving out a niche in which I feel satisfied with what I'm making but where I don't feel I have to separate myself into different people ("the classical composer" vs "the fan fiction reader" etc.) It helped me realise that I make music to connect to people, but also because I'm already connected to a lot of people whose voices I want to enhance, who are part of my community and whom I therefore want to become part of my practice. And that this requires the open and collaborative approach to opera or interdisciplinary work that I've tried here. I worked professionally in producing opera for a few years and have lived experience of these processes, but this is the first time I wrote and produced my own work and I consciously decided to experimentally alter the approach. I'm already planning the next opera and I want to stick to this approach in the future.

Bringing our own fairytales from the niche spaces on the internet not only to TV and cinema screens and books but also onto the classical music and opera stage is part of a healing process. Allowing space for narratives in which people like us can be happy instead of banning them to the naughty corner of the internet is a process that has only just begun but means a lot to us. There is much that classical music can learn from these spaces—aspects that can be translated into the physical world and inspire processes, collaborations and relationship with one’s audience— and much that it can give back to them in terms of validation and visibility. Serenoid serves as an example that this is the case, and I will certainly continue my work in this direction to connect the different communities I move in and to find new people to write for and with whom I want to engage in creating our dream-future. "To boldly go" doesn't have to mean outer space.

Tip

Tip

Robin Fiedler - We Are You - An Investigation into intersections between Western Contemporary Opera and Online Fan Culture - 2025