Twitter and opera; two institutions you probably never thought you’d hear in the same sentence, let alone in the same context. One is performed by teenagers, celebrities and generally anyone who wants to get their word out to the masses, from the privacy of their own homes or via their mobile phones, and the other is performed in lavish theatres to the doting elite.
They’re as far apart as chalk and cheese, Posh Spice and talent, Jack Tweed and ethics, yet for some reason Twitter has been turned into an opera, or at least the ‘Tweets’ of its users has. The Twitter opera debuted last night at London’s Royal Opera House no less, with just a few days of rehearsals.
The title of the Twitter opera is Twitterdammerung, which is apparently a pun title, but we haven’t the time to look up its meaning. The opera was a strange medley of unrelated ideas spawned from the tweets of 900 uses of Twitter, yet strangely, according to Igor Toronyi-Lalic, opera critic for the Telegraph, it sort of worked.
Toronyi-Lalic claimed that the hurriedly put together opera not only worked, but it had moments of brilliance:
Hidden amid the nonsense were some great moments: a tiny but pretty duet, some carefully-crafted musical sequences from Marc Teitler and Helen Porter, and humour by the bucket load.
Toronyi-Lalic concluded that while the opera was nothing more than a gimmick, it was a good gimmick.
This begs the question of where will Twitter end? How far can it go with using tweets? We’ve had an opera, we’ve had a book, perhaps a TV show or a movie could be next?
When you have a collaboration of some of the finest minds in the world, and some of the most insane at times, the material on Twitter could literally be used for anything.
I think it is definitely pushing the limits of how integrated into our culture Twitter can get, but I like the idea. I’d be interested to see how the opera turned out! Check out this video to see what other people are saying about the new Twitter opera: http://www.newsy.com/videos/a_twitter_opera