Sorry to have come so late to this project. Only just now catching up on the previous posts. This is absolutely amazing. I agree 100% that we could have a 'virtual choir' piece at the beginning and end of the Opera. We can write a 2-3 minute piece, a small poem about Free Will and the fact that it is precisely BECAUSE we have Free Will that our lives are NOT pre-ordained and we CAN change things. I do so hope that we can do this!!

Thank you so much for posting the TED talk and the Whitacre piece. I had no idea about this. Amazing. We CAN do it!! Let's DO IT!!!

I don't think it matters much where the virtual choir is placed in the score, as long as the piece is suitable for the purpose.

Some notes about technical aspects. Making a **real time** virtual choir would only be possible locally within the local teleoperator's network. Internet's current structure is very prone to creating bottlenecks in the network nodes which connect different teleoperators to each other. I also suspect that there isn't the technology to do the mixing of vast number of voices in real time. But I'm not an expert on audio production technology, so I may be wrong.

So, we would have to do this in the same way Whitacre did it: mixing the performance from recordings that each singer does in his/hers own time.

We would need an audio/video production expert to do the mixing and cutting. It shouldn't be too difficult to find one, if he/she gets his name in the credits in a resulting YouTube video. I thing many AV production firms could be intrested in the publicity.

We would also need some heavy duty HiFi equipment and also video projector(s) for playing the piece. It shouldn't be very hard to get some local firm to sponsor this event with suitable equipment.

Would the opening scene with Gabriel 'channeling' God's mood and the 'distress' chorus possibly be a good place to integrate a virtual choir? I think Enrico's comment about placing the virtual choir performance at the beginning or at the end is valid, and just in terms of coordination it might be easier to put it at the beginning. Or, assuming we will have an overture, could the virtual choir accompany the overture?

I love this idea. It was successfully done at Tampere Hall in Finland in a play. Internet, virtual connections nowadays really work.
In this the play an actor in another counry gave a flower to the actor who was at Tampere Hall. It looked amazing, when the same flower on the video screen suddenly reached the hand of the actor on the stage at Tampere Hall.
I would like to see this virtual choir tried , it is a wonderful idea.

I just love the idea. About ten years ago I had a vision of people singing together on different parts of the Earth and internet could make that a choir, combining their voices. Idea was disturbed only by the fact that I knew there were lagging information connections, sometimes the lag could be some 20 seconds. It was nice to see that idea ofchoir work well in Päivi's link, how it could be done! Awesome!

The idea of the virtual choir could actually a perfect coronation to this project, and also the ultimate kick to promote it by involving as many people as possible. In order not to make it draw the attention from the rest of the Opera, though, I also think it would suit best to just have a virtual choir performance in the beginning/end.
PS: the video was quite moving, I have to say.

Another **very** easy to use tool to make costuming, scenes, stages, &c, is Second Life. Accounts are free. There are lots of places (called Sandboxes) that you can use to build things in. It is much simpler to use than Google sketchup (yes, that is very possible), and you work in a 3D environment. That is, you actually walk around in 3D, carry things, hook them together, &c.

You can get an account from

http://secondlife.com/

The accounts are free, and there are usually a lot of people to help you do whatever you need to.