In2arts:Opera is a unique interactive software package that enables young people to immerse themselves in the whole experience of opera, showing it to be a vibrant and relevant art form that intrigues and stimulates across a wide range of ability, and a rich and multi-faceted educational tool that can reach across the curriculum.

The software contains abundant resources which not only illustrate the main operatic musical conventions - aria, recitative, chorus etc - but provide the basic material for extended development into individual and group creative endeavour. In effect it puts the users in the 'director's seat', asking them to probe and justify the musical and dramatic decisions that must be taken towards realising each element of a production.

The structured and modular Educational Support Pack, developed with teacher support, is designed to promote group and individual involvement both at, and away from the computer. The range of activities it contains lead to a diversity of creative outcomes, many of which can be expressed in the form of easily prepared animated storyboards built from a wide range of characters, backgrounds and props.

These can be enriched with sound files created from the students’ original musical compositions that can be embedded and layered within the frames, and text in a variety of forms can be added to augment the presentations. The software’s functionality also allows for the addition of MPEG video files to the storyboards.

In appearance and usage the software is iconic and enables the user immediate contact with its extensive content and resources without having to learn complex routines. Disability issues have been considered in the design of the software and there is great flexibility in the ways in which elements of the display can be reconfigured. Both the synopsis and ‘Young Person’s Guide to Opera’ have been recorded in manageable audio clips to facilitate improved access.

The presentation of the storyboards can be shown on interactive white boards, sent to other In2arts:Opera users in easily email-able attachments, converted to Quicktime files for unlimited access, or transferred to Word documents for presentation in a range of formats

In February 2003 the Department for Education and Skills and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority recognised In2arts:Opera as being a major vehicle for taking the Arts into schools and subsequently issued a government grant to enable the software to be issued free to all state secondary schools in England (approx. 5000). It is currently used as a major arts resource by the Specialist Schools Trust as part of their initiative of professional development training for teachers.