Los Alamitos, Calif. – September 18, 2026 -- Boston Lyric Opera has debuted a production at its new Opera + Community Studios in Boston's Fort Point neighborhood that replaces static subtitle screens with animated, projection-mapped typography built into the set itself, using three Epson large venue laser projectors to merge translation and scenic design into a single performance element.
MASARY Studios redesigns opera translation as a scenic element rather than a utility
Boston-based collective MASARY Studios, a neighbor of BLO in the same Fort Point building, was brought in to reimagine how translated "supertitles" function during a live opera. Rather than relegating text to small monitors near the stage, MASARY styled and animated typography to move in time with the singing across a story centered on three characters, embedding the words directly into the scenery.
"Operas are sung in Italian, German and French, and translation has always been treated as a utility, something to be read rather than experienced," said Sam Okerstrom-Lang, co-founder of MASARY Studios. "Our goal was to make the supertitles expressive, to animate the type itself and embed it into the scenery, allowing the words to carry the emotion of the story rather than just explain it."
Three Epson projectors handle dual-surface projection across the stage set
Two Epson large venue 4K 3-chip 3LCD laser projectors were converged into a single image to carry the animated supertitles across the set. A third unit, a 10,000-lumen 4K EB-PQ2010W fitted with an ultra short throw snorkel lens, powered a rear-projected window built into the set that singers could perform through, shifting audiences between scenes and time periods. Content ran through a media server, with the Epson Projector Professional Tool allowing the design team to converge, warp and adjust each image from a browser interface rather than a handheld remote.
Design team re-rigged projector placement after an undocumented HVAC obstruction
When an HVAC unit not shown in the venue drawings blocked the planned projector placement, MASARY's team swapped lensing and re-rigged the system on-site without altering the design concept, relying on Epson's interchangeable lenses and lightweight installation format to adapt within the tight scenic environment.
"MASARY Studios saw creative potential in what audiences had long accepted as a limitation, transforming translation into an expressive part of the performance," said Chris Teguh, product manager, Epson America. Bradley Vernatter, BLO's Stanford Calderwood General Director & CEO, said the collaboration with MASARY and BLO Artistic Advisor Anne Bogart "cracked open the possibilities of text and supertitles as a performance element."