[Performing Arts]

If you've been following my site for a while, you probably remember my posts about "Live Music" (the first-ever crowdsourced animated feature) and "Twitterdammerung" (the first-ever crowdsourced opera). "Live Music" has managed to earn its share of fans and enemies -- which was expected -- but very few people, me included, thought a Twitter opera would fall flat on its face.

"Twitterdammerung," the Twitter opera, was pieced together over the last several months from contributions from 900 Twitter users. Contributions naturally were only 140 characters or less, and what London's Royal Opera House had come up some time back -- the first act, where the protagonist was kidnapped by a flock of birds and a talking cat makes an appearance -- kind of made me shake my head.

Well, "Twitterdammerung" made its debut in London's Covent Garden -- to a surprisingly positive reception. Reviews have returned that the opera was simply silly from start to finish, and the audience was roaring with laughter throughout most of the show. And while many parts obviously needed some touching up (there's only so much you can do with three days of rehearsals), some parts, particularly the musical ones, were pretty good.

Opera critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic was there when it happened, and like most of us, he expected the entire Twitter opera to be an embarrassment (judging from previews that made him say "Yikes"). He said that, in the end, the Twitter opera was a cheap gimmick, but was a pretty good one as far as cheap gimmicks go.

Then again, maybe it wasn't fair to include the Twitter opera in the normal "old-fashioned" opera stereotype. You can't really expect a Michael Bay experience in the opera house.

I'd love to see the Twitter opera myself, but finding an opera house in the region where I work is harder than getting out of a Malaysian traffic jam, so I'll wait for it to come out on YouTube. :)

You might remember my article on "Live Music," the first-ever crowdsourced animated film. It only ran for five minutes, and the Romeo-and-Juliet-esque plot wasn't something to write home about, but it was good enough to merit a screening by Sony. The simple fact that hundreds of thousands of Facebook users lent their talents to bring the short to life was by itself "Live Music's" main draw.

Of course, "Live Music" wasn't the first crowdsourced work of art to be created -- what makes it so special is the fact that it made mainstream fame. Crowdsourced success stories are hard to come by -- for instance, there were attempts to create crowdsourced novels, which all ended up dead on the water. (Sometimes the road less traveled doesn't make all the difference, after all -- the greatest stories are almost always told from a single mind.)

But apparently that's not going to stop London's Royal Opera House to announce the first-ever crowdsourced opera. The writers are creating an opera based on ideas by contributors on Twitter. That means you could contribute to the storyline one line, one scene, one action at a time -- in 140 characters or less.

So far, so good -- Act 1, Scene 1 has already been completed, with the protagonist being kidnapped by a flock of birds and is now held captive in a tower, awaiting rescue. Oh, and there's also a talking ginger cat in the cast, too. Hmmm.

Okay, so I've never really been a fan of opera. But I AM a fan of crowdsourcing and other advances the Internet has gifted civilization, and this is enough to make me keep an eye on this story. If this proves so popular that it gets young people interested in opera all over again, then I might need to tweak my preferences in the performing arts.

Now I'm wondering if John Mayer, Miley Cyrus, and Lil Wayne are going to contribute too.

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