Opening night for the Twitter opera
Updated on 05 September 2009
The Twitter opera opens at the Royal Opera House, with lyrics made up entirely of tweets.
The tweets sent to @youropera are being set to original music by composer Helen Porter, mixed with some familiar opera tunes.
Extracts from the Twitter opera, lasting 20 minutes each, will be performed on Saturday and Sunday at the Royal Opera House in London, with the Twitter contribution forum still open for public suggestions. There will also be 20 laptops available to tweet suggestions during the festival itself.
Alison Duthie, head of ROH2 at the Royal Opera House, said: "It's the people's opera and the perfect way for everyone to become involved with the inventiveness of opera as the ultimate form of storytelling."
So far, around 900 people have used the Twitter website to write 140-character tweets, and the volume of tweets has generated enough content for a seven-act opera, according to ROH spokeswoman Sara Parsons.
"When pigs do fly, these birds will cry, and forever more leave torture to the devil. Bring me a pig!" was one of the contributions sent online.