N'importe quoi!

«"The Twitter Opera" will join 140-character Twitter messages into a libretto set to familiar opera tunes and new music by composer Helen Porter.

The two singers, an experienced baritone and a soprano both in their mid 30s, will be announced next week.

The Royal Opera House is inviting contributions to the plot on its #youropera Twitter page. Contributions are being published on the Royal Opera House blog.

The story begins: "One morning, very early, a man and a woman were standing, arm-in-arm, in London’s Covent Garden. The man turned to the woman and he sang…"

Act One, Scene One has been finished after 40 "tweets". The blog summarises its ending as follows: "William is languishing in a tower, having been kidnapped by a group of birds who are anxious for revenge after he has killed one of their number.

"Hans has promised to rescue him. The Woman With No Name is off to her biochemistry laboratory to make a potion to let people speak to the birds."

The Royal Opera House is appealing for suggestions for an opening for Act One, Scene Two. This follows a stall in contributions after confusions about the plot.

Jeremy Pound, the BBC Music Magazine's deputy editor, thinks the exercise "was an accident waiting to happen".

"Whenever there is a new fad you know somebody in the art world is going to grab hold of it by the horns,"
he tells the London Evening Standard.

"They should be careful that it doesn't overtake the serious stuff they do." Jonathan Lennie, Time Out's classical music critic, disagrees: "Opera belongs to everyone. This is good because it is experimental. It demystifies the process of creating opera."

Extracts of the opera will be performed in an informal setting around a piano in the Paul Hamlyn Hall as part of the Deloitte Ignite Festival from September 4-6. Laptops for "tweeting" will be available during the event to aid the creative process.»

A propósito deste tipo de iniciativas - para não lhe chamar outra coisa -, os meus (quase) conterrâneos franceses utilizam amiúde uma expressão sintética, curta e grossa: "n'importe quoi!"
Está tudo dito!

Se estas almas pensam conquistar público deste modo...