This week a collection of 30 students, performers and instructors band together to deliver an original opera set to the works of Mozart and taking place inside the world of Minecraft.

The project, which kicked off at Virginia Tech in March, debuts this week at the university's Cube space at the Center of the Arts and a last minute addition has both shows streaming live on the Internet.

Ariana Wyatt, an assistant professor of voice at Virginia Tech and the show's director, decided to stream the full show because the venue can only hold about 100 people.

The show combines the in-world actions of a cast of Minecraft characters controlled by a group of high school students and voiced by a group of Virginia Tech music majors. The performance takes place in The Cube, a four-story high-tech theater.

"It's really cool, really interesting to see and surprisingly powerful when there is a tragedy at the end."

The video of the Minecraft opera will be projected onto a 42-foot-by-26-foot screen. The singers will stand to the side of the mammoth screen on the second and third tiers of the cube, while the high school students will be controlling the actions of the Minecraft characters from a table in front of the screen. A piano placed on the stage will provide the music.

Wyatt said the team didn't have their first full rehearsal until yesterday. That's because a bit of tech designed to match the movements of the characters' mouths with the singers' voices wasn't ready until yesterday.

Over the course of the year, the team has been hard at work writing the story and music for the opera, building the tech and mapping out the movements of the characters in the game.

Wyatt said the cast and crew of about 30 all seem to have the show down and that the experience is surprisingly emotional.

"It's really cool, really interesting to see and surprisingly powerful when there is a tragedy at the end," she said.

You can watch the performance on Livestream on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. ET or Saturday at 2 p.m. ET.

Update: You can watch Wednesday night's live performance in the player below. It starts at about 19 minutes in.



