Opera is a significant part of, especially European, Cultural Heritage. It is also an area from which many feel excluded through lack of knowledge and understanding. OpenDrama is an EU funded project which sets out to deliver new ways of accessing opera and its archives. Opera involves a wide range of media, which interact in a number of ways. It is essentially time based, sequential. Historical archives hold structured data, metadata and media elements. Bringing these together to create an accessible whole with extensible software was the challenge. The OpenDrama system is designed to appeal to both the newcomer to opera and to the professional. It achieves this by having a number of different ways in which users can interact with the system. These vary from a memory palace as an exploratory environment where you can move from space to space encountering different thematic aspects of opera, “the jealous lover” or “revenge”. Or a “karaoke” style interface where a singer can practice by dropping out a single voice from a recording, taking that part and singing a duet with another recorded singer and full orchestra. Or the learner/teacher can annotate media sequences with individual notes, with specified keywords or with links to build trails and interactions, which re-articulate opera and its contexts. Information can be built up for an individual performance, or a particular production or about the opera itself. Using international standards access to opera archives around the world can be given. Scenarios have been used extensively in the development of OpenDrama, their use and effectiveness for creating user interfaces are discussed. The paper discusses how the design and content for the OpenDrama system has been developed and will be delivered. It also discusses the applicability of the system to other time based media, and its communication and learning aspects.