The Origin quartet, Anonymous 4; tenor Todd Graber; bass Eric Johnson; the women's vocal ensemble, Kitka; the SUNY Oswego College Choir; Oswego College-Community Orchestra; and the Oswego Festival Chorus. Of the over 200 performers, about 80 were students at SUNY Oswego. The projected video images which served as a backdrop to the performance were by filmmaker Bill Morrison. The Origin The Origin is an opera/oratorio composed by Richard Einhorn to a libretto by Richard Einhorn and Catherine Barnett based on the writings of Charles Darwin. The oratorio takes its title from Darwin's 1859 "On the Origin of Species". The work was commissioned
On the Origin of Species Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" (1871). Natural selection was expected to work very slowly in forming new species, but given the effectiveness of artificial selection, he could "see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection". Using a tree diagram and calculations, he indicates the "divergence of character" from original species into new species and genera. He describes branches