The Idea: The new millennium, which has just begun, will bring technology to the lives of people in a way never witnessed before. Information is readily available, the Internet supplies knowledge to people, it provides communication and plays a major role in letting boundaries disappear, thereby becoming a global terrain. Virtopera was conceived strictly for the Internet. Its concept is centered round the notion that various cultural ideas are presented in layers of peculiarities and character traits, so that the event thus empowered is thrust onto the world stage. Aided by the employment of pictures, music, sites and figures supplied by a virtual studio, linear thinking and perception is abandoned so that a new form can emerge, the Mystical Art. The concept is familiar from classical literature, for instance Tamino in the Magic Flute, who is traversing the elements, and by Pinocchio or Montezuma.

Virtopera, a net-work-opera-in-progress, is addressing humans involved in the fulfillment of an open society. Cold Genius, a virtual-world figure, is confronted with feelings, passions and humanitarian ideals. Presented to the Virtopera audience as a mysterious figure with an infinite number "8" on the forehead, he develops more and more into a being envisioned and conjured up by the user. Cold Genius, then, by virtue of the constancy of changes he is undergoing, becomes the connecting content, thereby transmogrifying the Internet and its virtual reality into a mystical place.

 
     
 

The Composer: The Munich-based composer and conductor Eberhard Schoener has written the following short operas during last past five years:

Cold Genius ............Palazzo dell' Amore............... Die Rache............... Beleza Negra

The object of these four operas (each no longer than half an hour), is to show "emotions, mostly the feeling of love, as unprotected and direct as possible. Opera, in essence, has never been about anything else."
His fifth opera, Virtopera, not only places the composition onto the Internet, but places the Internet as a main player and a major agent, by virtue of its virtual terrain, a virtual figure and other infinite possibilities. Content is added to unclassified and unappraised collection: a compilation of things and ideas combined with the unorganized catalog of information, giving new meaning and a new momentum to the Internet. As the opera is taking shape on the Internet, the user has the option to fill the screen provided to him with his or her individual perceptions and inspirations.

  
     
  The Path: Eberhard Schoener has tossed this idea around for over two years. He invented the virtual character Cold Genius. The concept underlying this creation are literary figures from the past who embodied the yearning of humans to endow pure, cold matter with soul: In "The tales of Hoffmann", Olympia is in pursuit of that quest, and so is the wood doll in Pinocchio. The miracle is achieved through the mystery of love, the mystical experience of love empowers to feel emotion and to be human.
As luck would have it, Eberhard Schoener met Olaf Schirm, whose company NoDNA can produce virtual figures that are life-like. This mechanism enables Cold Genius to appear in real time. He is not a computer-animated figure! The plan underlying Virtopera is to perform live on the Internet (simultaneously) at different locations which are stipulated by the dramaturgy. 		 
     
  The New Idea: New in this particular form of artistic realization of an idea is not only the active participation of the user in the progress of the artistic work. The inventive idea is the concept of Cold Genius. He is a manifestation of the Internet. He is the compilation and amassment of information, yet he does not know and is not aware of its value. But because the information given to him is related and transmitted by human beings, he is afflicted with an unidentifiable longing to surpass and expand his limits, to look what lies beyond. He finds himself yearning for experiences and knowledge, but has no clue as to what constitutes emotions and how do they affect everything. So the theme of Virtopera is his journey into the world of humans. In the wake of this journey, a new being is created.