For many people, the opera is just a chance to nap in a $300 chair under a $1,500 chandelier while wearing $2,000 worth of clothes. But one opera festival in the U.K. is making sure that its extravagance is at least powered by clean energy.
CleanTechnica’s Zachary Shahan notes that the 78th Glyndebourne Festival is billing itself as the “first opera festival powered by renewable energy.” The star of the show is a wind turbine that will provide 90 percent of the power for staging the operas.
Opera might not be the most sustainable of activities. All forms of theater require costumes, sets, lights, and other resources, some of which get tossed as soon as the show is done. But increasingly, theater companies are getting on board with making their operations not only wind-powered, but more energy-efficient and less wasteful.
One of my favorite examples of these efforts is the Syndey Theater Company, which — under the directorship of Cate Blanchett (who can do no wrong) and her husband Andrew Upton — has now installed not only rooftop solar panels but a wastewater tank, and which is working out how to recycle the materials used in productions.
Opera, though, has one additional claim to fame: Performers can justifiably point out that they’ve been wind-powered for centuries.
