Thanks to a comment left on this blog by the Laurence Sterne Trust I discovered that the composer Craig Vear has written and produced a digital opera based on A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne.

You can actually hear the 45-minute long piece streamed on the internet in a recording of the public showing at the Studio theatre, York Theatre Royal, 9th Feb 2011. It’s well worth a listen, especially as one of the musicians is the cellist Audrey Riley (who, incidentally, I worked with in a past life as a professional musician).

From the website dedicated to the project:

A Sentimental Journey (45mins) is a digital opera for a mixed ensemble of technologies, remote audiences and live performers: 4 musicians, 4 laptops, and an actor/singer. It is created from a book: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne, first published in 1768.

It is not an opera about the book, nor is it with the book – as in a libretto – but something that is more inbetween. In this sense the music is created from within the book; that is to say, the imaginary dimension that the book generates when read, or was in the mind of the author when written.

Find out more at the website A Sentimental Journey – A Digital Opera.