Lyric Opera’s new SoundShirt lets you feel the music – Chicago Tribune

The opening bars of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” are as visceral as they come in opera: the icy zing of tremolo strings, then a full-chested, loping brass chorale.

For hearing audiences, that is. For deaf audiences, not much would seem to happen during the overture to Lyric Opera’s “The Flying Dutchman,” opening the company’s 2023-24 season this year. The minimal onstage action — a drawn curtain, dimmed lights and vacant stage — offers zero insight into what’s happening musically. You wouldn’t know the orchestra was playing at all, were conductor Enrique Mazzola not gesticulating energetically in the pit.

The SoundShirt, a wearable haptic accessory piloted by Lyric Opera this season in partnership with the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD), changes that. When the strings begin to play, wearers feel a thrill down their shoulders and upper chest. When the horns start to sing, it registers as a buzz at both elbows.

Starting with its Oct. 1 performance of “Flying Dutchman,” Lyric will provide SoundShirts to up to 10 audience members at select shows this season, most of them matinees. Users will feel, physically, what’s happening in the score — a breakthrough for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, and a first for an opera company anywhere in the world.

When attending live theater, MOPD commissioner Rachel Arfa — who is deaf — usually relies on visual context clues to anticipate transitions between musical numbers, like onstage blocking or lighting changes. She says experiencing an early demo of the SoundShirt during last season’s “West Side Story” gave her a better understanding of just how much music crops up throughout that production.

“At the end, when everybody is applauding, I did not know the orchestra continues to play. I’d not been able to access that sound,” Arfa said during a Sept. 19 news conference introducing the device at the Lyric Opera House. “That was so powerful, to be able to pick up other cues I was never able to experience.”

Designed by London-based firm CuteCircuit, the SoundShirt looks a bit like a chic, lightweight athletic jacket. Embedded within the fabric are 16 haptic actuators — ”fancy speak for little motors,” says Brad Dunn, Lyric’s senior director of digital initiatives. Those actuators correspond to one microphone above the stage and seven placed near various instrumental sections in Lyric’s orchestra pit. (Optionally, the actuators can glow like something ripped from a sci-fi flick, though a Lyric spokesperson assured the Tribune they’d stay dark during performances.) During “The Flying Dutchman,” SoundShirt wearers will feel the orchestra’s deepest instruments — string bass and kettle drums — rumble along their flanks and lower back. Woodwinds, especially clarinets, tickle the chest when they play out.

That somatic mapping will change depending on the repertoire. Dunn can reprogram the SoundShirts to better suit the intricacies of a given score, or to adjust to feedback from users — as he did in June, when a deaf and hard-of-hearing trial audience tested SoundShirts during Lyric’s “West Side Story” run. He can even adjust the actuators’ levels live during a performance, much like an engineer working a soundboard.

“It’s going to vary from show to show. I can see us playing with it a little bit more with it as we go,” Dunn says.

Tickets to borrow SoundShirts cost $20 each and correspond to designated seats within the first 20 rows on the right side of the house. To start, 10 medium and large SoundShirts will be available for select shows; the company expects a second shipment of small and extra large SoundShirts to arrive later in the season, which will bring the total count to roughly 15 per performance. The garment is meant to be worn over users’ regular wear, though Lyric recommends patrons avoid thick or baggy clothing so that the SoundShirt’s vibrations aren’t deadened.

That said: no sleeveless tops, please. And while Lyric can’t stop SoundShirt wearers from sipping pinot at intermission, at $1,500 a pop, the company is understandably urging caution.

“These go through a dry-cleaning process after each (production), so we want to keep them in good shape for as long as possible,” Dunn says.

Lyric’s SoundShirt initiative has precedent. The Philadelphia-based company Music: Not Impossible has designed similar wearable actuators used in productions by Opera Philadelphia and the International Brazilian Opera Company.

But Lyric is the first company to offer such accommodations for multiple productions. To Anthony Freud, Lyric’s general director, president and CEO, the SoundShirt builds upon the company’s deeper commitment to disability access, which, to date, has included audio descriptions of productions, theater touch tours, Braille program books and ASL interpreters at English-language operas.

Freud also said accessibility informed Lyric’s recent reseating project, which changed the size and angle of seats and reduced the house’s capacity by nearly 300.

“One of the most important journeys the company has been on for several years has been our focus on inclusivity, diversity, equity and access. It’s a journey that will continue into the future,” Freud said at the Sept. 19 news conference. “Today’s announcement, and the whole of the SoundShirt project, is clearly a very important part of the development of our focus on access in every aspect of our work.”

The SoundShirt has been used to accompany live classical music performances from its conception, first unveiled alongside a concert by the Junge Symphoniker Hamburg in 2016. The product grew out of the HugShirt, a CuteCircuit invention credited as the “first wearable haptic telecommunication garment.” However, CuteCircuit’s collaboration with Lyric marks the first time the SoundShirt has been used for opera. At the Sept. 19 SoundShirt preview, it was apparent the technology had been built with orchestras in mind. The actuators tended to be more receptive to the sounds of the orchestra than to the singers onstage, reliably picking up solo singers only when they hit the forte-plus range. The SoundShirt likewise reacted inconsistently, if at all, to solo instrumental lines.

“Bear in mind the word ‘pilot,’” Freud cautions.

As Dunn and accessibility advocates stress, when it comes to touch-based tech, the goal is not to replicate a hearing person’s experience but to create a completely new one. In that sense, the SoundShirt augments what we all experience in awe-inspiring operatic moments, when music is not something heard but felt — humming across the skin, through the floor, in one’s sternum.

“We’re not recreating the experience of hearing music, because that can’t be recreated. This is its own thing,” Dunn says.

SoundShirt tickets will be available for $20 at the following performances, all at the Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Upper Wacker Drive; more information at www.lyricopera.org:

• “The Flying Dutchman,” 2 p.m. Oct. 1
• “Jenůfa,” 2 p.m. Nov. 12
• “The Daughter of the Regiment,” 2 p.m. Nov. 16
• “Cinderella,” 2 p.m. Jan. 21, 2024
• “Champion,” 2 p.m. Jan. 31 and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3, 2024
• “Aida,” 2 p.m. March 17, 2024

Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.

The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The Chicago Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.