A Tale of Two Ritas
or
Two Husbands, One Wife, Two Grids, One Production, Two Friends, Three Avatars

I reserved a spot to see the Opera de Rennes production of Donizetti's Rita, which their virtual-world division - operabis - was streaming live into both Second Life and their own Francogrid. Because I was sent a group invitation that didn't "take" and assumed the sim would be closed I decided to go ahead of time to Francogrid as a reserve. It turned out the organisers hadn't understood the times correctly (their clocks turned back a week ago) so I had an hour to fiddle around - which was fine as Enjah turned up and said the SL event was sold out. We spent ages trying to get her into Francogrid on Imprudence, but failing for unknown reasons, then at the last minute - five minutes before the curtain FELL, she decided to try SL, mapped me, and teleported to the theatre. The sim was open! What a race!

The production was wonderful - voices and staging equally impressive. I'm not a Donizetti fan by any stretch, but I'd love to see this in real or just a better video, as the chunky stream allowed only the broadest staging to be seen. I hope they do more productions in VR!

I was probably the only person on both grids, and I was interested to see the crowds were similar sizes. Peak SL that I saw was 31, Francogrid was 29. I may've missed peaks, but those were what I saw. The theatres were the same; SL event had drinks in the atrium. On Francogrid I saw flo and Pathfinder from SL.


In Second Life
Enjah managed to get there just before the curtain fell.
On Francogrid
I'm in the front row, on the left side of the picture. I was originally worried Imprudence wouldn't stream the sound well, and it did cut in and out and was low so I tried SL and that's when I received the landmark and went to that theatre. I'm sure I blew my puter's tiny mind as the sound started coming from my speakers instead of headphones. SL V2 sound was reliable. I had NO crashes on either client, despite my abuses.

Labels: Opera