Saturday, September 5, 2009

no falsetto notes at first twitter opera

The world's first Twitter Opera, "Twitterdammerung", premiered at London's Royal Opera House hours ago. The libretto was "written" by 900 tweeters who sent posts to @youropera. The 140 character lyrics were set to original music and mixed with familiar opera tunes. The opera can be read in full here.

As with all things twitter, it was produced under enormous time pressure. The production was allotted just three days for rehearsal and not much more for composition. Still, what unfolded on stage proved enough to impress even curmudgeonly opera critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic who gave it a grudging thumbs up:
What unfolded before me was actually not bad at all. The format lent itself to gags and...the gags were some of the best I'd ever heard on the opera floor, proving that it's not the art form that's unfunny, merely the minds of our ageing composers and librettists.


What does this mean for the future of entertainment? That Hollywood and Broadway will come to rely on productions that spring from creative crowdsourcing? Somehow I doubt it. As probably does anyone who's taken part in creative gangbangs. But I add my applause to that of the Royal Opera House audience. While the production may not have rivalled Candida, it ingeniously accomplished the Opera House's presumed goal of getting more people interested and involved in opera. "It's the perfect way for everyone to become involved with the inventiveness of opera as the ultimate form of storytelling," said Alison Duthie, head of ROH2 who was no doubt gratified to observe that the audience last night skewed decades younger than is typical for opera.

Random note: Coincidentally, I received news of this while touring Sydney's Opera House in Australia, site of other operatic twitter excitement. Remember? The tweeter for @RealHughJackman was outed as fake by a post that mistakenly referred to the Sydney Opera Center. Caused quite a tempest in the teapot called twitter.

Heard about this on twitter, of course. Thanks to @Single_Shot for the tip.

2 comments:

Alina said...

Holy Sh**! I love it. Amazing what can be done world wide.

California Girl said...

Hey! Didja watch Mad Men last night?

Last week was boring but this week was much more interesting. Lots of action. The kid was good. The mother, Betty, is a continual basket case. And now they're giving Don a conscience? I guess that's called "character development".