Britain's prestigious Royal Opera House has launched a new bid to take high culture to the online masses — by getting Twitter users to write the lyrics to a new work, line by line.

But the experiment — which it plans to stage with music next month — is proving a challenge, with some distinctly oddball contributions and confusion over how exactly to put them together.

The Royal Opera House, in London's Covent Garden district, launched the attempt last week, inviting users of the micro-blogging website to take the story forward in 140 characters or less, much like a children's party game.

So far it has completed Act One, Scene One — but the risks of crowd-sourcing a work of art soon became apparent from the opening stanzas:

"A small bird twitters over there, He sings without a single care, If only we could be so free, without the worries and the..."

"...concerns of a nihilist. I would bring you flowers, but they would die. I would love you, but, why?"

"The bird responded, 'Flowers they are strange to me, the fruits of nature that I see, are worms and seeds and cats and rats -"

"Nuts, I love hazelnuts.' Bang! The bird dropped from the sky, dead, its tiny wings were frozen."

"he (sic) woman looks at the bird sadly, she is confused: 'William, I'm not sure where this is going for us."

The project has progressed to Act One, Scene Two, but organisers admit they have been struggling to keep the narrative train on track.

"Sorry to people who are finding this a bit confusing. It's all a bit of an experiment. We've been suggesting that people tweet to @youropera, but we've had a suggestion that it would be better tweeting to a hashtag," the opera house's online host said.

"What does everyone think? I think we might need some Twitter experts to help us out."

On Sunday another online host wondered: "So, what on earth has happened to the story?... the storyline has ground to something of a halt — mostly because no one knows what's going on."

In the latest tweets on Monday, there was a candid admission: "So people, this is chaos! Please include #youropera in all tweet contributions and I'll carry on pulling it together..."

When the work is finished, the plan is to set excerpts from it to music, for performance in Covent Garden as part of a special event in September.

The latest instalments can be read, or written, at twitter.com/youropera.