It probably won’t be Madame Butterfly, but it should be fun.
In an effort to get more people involved with opera, London’s world-famous Royal Opera House in Covent Garden is turning away — temporarily — from classic talents like Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini and giving the composer’s pen to ... just about anybody.
All you need to contribute is a computer or a mobile phone and an account on Twitter.
It’s a very democratic approach — the plot will be worked out by twitterers contributing one line at a time, then put to music by professionals — but some harbor doubts about the quality of the work that will be performed next month.
“It’s a gimmick, but not a malign gimmick” London music critic Norman Lebrecht said. “I wouldn’t put too high hopes on it. It won’t produce great opera.”
He said the use of Internet technology to concoct a collective work of art is not new — but that success stories have been very rare.
“In the earlier days of the Internet there were a number of collaborative novels, including some started by major writers, and none of them worked,” he said.
Fans are contributing to the libretto line by line, their imaginations limited only by the Twitter format, which allows a maximum of 140 characters to be posted at a time.
The plot that is taking shape is surreal and, at the same time, very dramatic, said Alison Duthie, director of ROH2, the Royal Opera House’s contemporary program.
“At the end of act 1, scene 1, our hero had been kidnapped by a flock of birds and is in a tower awaiting rescue,” she said.
There is also a talking cat, she said.
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