[anet08banff] The World Opera calls for a New Year Support from YOU

[Niels Windfeld Lund]

Dear Colleagues, Friends and Partners

Holiday Seasons is getting close and another promising New Year is coming
near, also for The World Opera. It all started with a workshop in May 2006
in Berkeley, California, with a performance of the first act of the
worldopera "JH-Between Earth and Heaven". Here the idea of a World Opera
was born emphasizing worldwide artistic diversity as well as worldwide
distribution enabled by the newest technology. Since then the project has
expanded in many directions at an incredible speed bringing new partners
in all the time, latest from Japan and Korea. 

In 2008 the most notable good news was of course the grant of 24 M NOK
from The Norwegian Research Council to a group of Universities and
Research Institutes located in Oslo as well as in Tromsø to develop the
technology tools best suited for a distributed opera format in close
cooperation with the artists in the World Opera. As the first step for
this joint effort by the Arts and Sciences, the first World Opera
Symposium took place in May, 8-10, in Tromsø, with participation of
artists and technology researchers from Europe and North America,
discussing the immense challenges for turning a distributed opera into a
reality. It was organized by the one man company, The World Opera, with
support from The Nordic Council of Culture, The Arts Council of Norway,
The City of Tromsø and the University College of Tromsø. Since then,
thanks to support from the Presidents of the University of Tromsø and The
University College of Tromsø as well as Sparebank1 Northern Norway funds,
we have been able to initiate the artistic work on the first distributed
opera, Niels Klims Subterranean Journey, and plan the first artistic test
sessions during 2009, partly with classical material of Mozart, Verdi and
Gershwin, partly with the new world opera composers. 

However, beyond the huge artistic and technical challenges facing the
World opera project, it has also been a very big
organizational/administrative challenge to make all this happen across
traditional borders between the Sciences, Engineering and the Arts;
different administrative/legal regimes, countries etc. etc. So far I have
"solved" it by running it in a kind of parallel track of entities
consisting of a one man company, a research project and an informal
international network, but as we move closer to going more in depth with
tests and real artistic productions, it becomes increasingly difficult to
continue without a more clear and well founded international World opera
organization operating with a responsible board and staff making formal
agreements with sponsors, artists, venues etc. etc.  

Advised by legal experts in Arts councils etc. I have come to the
conclusion that a non-profit foundation is the best organizational format
for creating a platform for international cooperation on research,
education, and last, but not least, full scale productions of opera. I
have explored several options for locating this foundation in one of the
participating countries and I have found out that Denmark seems to be best
suited for being the legal home of the World Opera. In principle there are
no requirements to have an initial capital according to Danish law, but in
order to have a certain level of credibility for a public accountant, one
needs to have a minimum capital like 25.000 DKK or appr. USD 5000. Since
this initial capital is only for credibility purposes and not for any
specific activitiy, it is difficult to apply for that kind of money at the
councils for either research or artistic purposes. It is more likely to
come as a gift without any other condition than that it be used as an
initial capital for a foundation with the name "The World Opera". As soon
as the initial capital of 25K DKK/USD 5K has been raised, a world opera
foundation will immediately be established and further fundraising for the
activities will then take place through the regular channels of arts
councils, sponsors etc. etc., just as the joint work by artists and
researchers will move on and hopefully result in exciting performances in
the years to come. 

On this background I will hereby kindly ask you to consider making a
contribution to the World Opera, an amount of money of your own choice
(many small gifts are just great :)), all in order to create an initial
capital for a coming non-profit World Opera foundation with the purpose of
merging and improving the efforts so far done by the artists and
researchers involved. If you wish to contribute, I will ask you to do it
before January 9th 2009 4pm GMT (or eventually notify me if you want to
make a contribution later).

Contributions can be sent to the bank account of the company The World
Opera:

The World Opera 
c/o Niels Windfeld Lund
Solveien 66
N-9024 Tomasjord
Norway

FOKUS BANK
N-7466 Trondheim, Norway
SWIFT-BIC: DABANO22
IBAN: NO24 9731 1066 386 

Please mention: "Contribution for the non-profit World opera foundation"
and if you want to be anonymous, please write "Anonymous contribution
for..." 

A full report of the account will be available on request. 

If there is an amount/(promise) of minimum of 25K DKK/ USD 5K at January
9th. 2009 on the World Opera account, the World Opera foundation will be
established immediately afterwards and the work will continue as planned.
If not, the contributions will be returned to the donors and the World
Opera will be closed for good. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to send an email or call
me +47-46673736. 

Please feel free to forward this email to anybody you think will be
interested. 

After all this I will just thank you all for great support and interest so
far and wish you all Happy Holidays and an Exciting New Year 


Best regards, 

Niels Windfeld Lund

www.theworldopera.org