Well, finally I went to see one of those Metropolitan Opera live moviecasts — the live performances streamed to movie theaters. And yes, it was marvelous. The work was ll Trittico, which, as ever, I find slow going in Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica, and divine in Gianni Schicchi. (Well, except for that climactic chord at the end of Suor Angelica — the soprano on high C, G in the bass, and D, F, and A in between. I’ve never looked at a score, but each time I hear it, I just love that chord. It’s a modern pop sound, decades before its time — and the pop notation, Dm7/G, makes a lot more sense than any classical chord symbols anyone might use for it.)
But you might not be reading this to see me gush about Puccini’s harmony. (Though really I ought to talk more about music here. And I love Puccini.) So here’s my future of classical music point. Yes, it’s terrific to see the Met in a movie theater. There’s the communal sense of a live performance. People applauded, just as they’d do in the opera house. And the opera looks larger than life, which is also what you’d want if you saw it live.
And yet I’ll cite two problems. First, some of the nuns in Suor Angelica — seen, unavoidably, in close-ups — had fancy manicures. Now, if you’re an opera fan, you might say, “So what?”
You’re thrilled to see the opera on a movie screen. You don’t care about anybody’s nails. (And who’s going to tell the singers that, just for this one performance, they have to unmanicure themselves, and then run out to the nail salon to get the manicures done again? Will the Met pay for that?)
But when I told someone not yet an opera initiate about the manicures, he just howled with laughter. And that’s just the point. To the extent that these moviecasts reach outside the standard opera audience, the nuns’ nails really do matter. Movie fans collect gaffes like that in movies. Sometimes they do it affectionately. But if they sense that the people making the movie aren’t wholly serious, they’ll get angry, or at least derisive. If the Met wants a mainstream audience for its theater showings (and maybe later for DVD releases), it has to take responsibility for every detail on the screen.
Which then brings me to the intermission conversation between Jack O’Brien, who directed the production, and James Levine, who conducted it. This, to put it plainly, was self-congratulatory crap. O’Brien says Levine is wonderful, Levine says O’Brien is wonderful, both say the operas and the singers are wonderful. This, from two smart guys, who could talk much more seriously if they wanted to. (Actually, they seemed like they could dish the production from top to bottom, which would have been priceless, not that we’ll ever see it happen.)
If this had been a bonus track on a movie DVD, my friend would once again be snorting, If, that is — since he’s a smart guy himself — he wasn’t offended at this insult to his intelligence. How can people get away with blather like this in classical music, with nobody saying a word against them, w hen anywhere in popular culture they’d get blasted? (Just for instance: The Onion –the satirical newspaper that, on its more serious pages, has some of the smartest pop-culture coverage anywhere — makes a cottage industry of finding dumb DVD commentary tracks.)
Why couldn’t Levine and O’Brien name the parts of the operas that don’t quite work? (I’d nominate the end of Il Tabarro, when the baritone draws his wife, the soprano, under his cloak, just he did when they were young lovers — except that this time the cloak hides the body of the tenor, the soprano’s lover, whom the baritone has just strangled. Especially in closeup — with poor Licitra doing his best to look like a google-eyed corpse — this could have been one of those EC horror comics from back in the ’50s, where gore was uncorked partly for laughs.)
Or they could have talked about the parts that were hard to stage. Or the parts that were easy. Or the parts that at first they interpreted differently. Then they could have told us how they resolved their differences. Or — since in another intermission feature we were told that this production had the most massive set ever seen at the Met — they could have told us how they got such a huge (and surely expensive) set approved, at a time when the Met has been running deficits.
Some people worry that classical music is going to be dumbed down. I worry that — at least as it’s normally presented — it doesn’t seem smart enough.
It sounds as though you expect the stage work to adapt to what the camera will catch. You’ve got it backwards. The problem isn’t what’s happening on stage, with the manicures: it’s that the cinematographer didn’t catch that and go for shots that would not REVEAL the manicures. (And the director and editor also didn’t catch this.) The audience in the house sees something quite different; they’re just never close enough to catch the artificiality of manicures and (of course) stage makeup, wigs, etc.
You have to remember that this is similar to the idea that what is most important is how good-looking or thin the singers are, not whether they can sing. That’s a really bad road, and one we’re already going down.
Thanks for the post, Greg. The “nuns’ manicure” problem is, as you allude to, something that mars DVDs. For opera to really make that jump to recorded, digital media it needs to address this issue and accept that it is a visual art form.
I just got finished reading a press release announcing the first performing arts HD DVD from Opus Arte, a recording of the Ballet of the Paris Opera doing Swan Lake.
I shudder to think what we’ll see when OA starts releasing opera in HD.
I take your point that movie-star manicures on “nuns” would be a distraction. But, I’m more in line with Lisa’s comment, at least as I understand her. Live stage productions — even when they’re seen on screen, DVD, etc — should not be trying to compete with movie-style special effects. I’ve always felt that much of the power of opera is in the very artificiality of its effects. I recently watched the DVD of the Met’s “Parsifal” (from 1995, or thereabouts). That scene where Klingsor’s castle disappears would’ve been way too easy for Industrial Light & Magic to render in totally realistic fashion. But it’s an altogether different thrill, allowing oneself to be persuaded by stage machinary!
As you point out, this artifice may well put off some people. I’m not sure there’s a good solution there, other than productions whose overall quality and committment somehow bring us willingly to “belief”. Whatever that means!
I didn’t catch the manicure thing, but then this was my first Met moviecast, so I was more into just being able to experience the event rather than catching those details, much as I like to do that when my antennae are more alert.
But I’d be curious to hear what people thought of the second intermission feature, about the National Council auditions with Speight Jenkins and friends. One fellow opera movie-goer was absolutely livid when we were chatting in the parking lot, at what he felt was the dismissive nature of the remarks of one of the judges towards the singers. It is not an exaggeration to say that my friend was utterly appalled to hear such comments presented on film to a national audience, especially in what is supposed to be an initiative to get more people “into opera”. I can see his point, even though I wasn’t as taken aback as him. I think I was too busy thinking of how the title singer in “Gianni Schicchi” reminded me of Harpo Marx (with singing, of course).
Fascinating conversation here. It shows the Met’s experiment, growing pains and all, is working–the criticisms and responses are much like one would here at an intermission in the opera house, or in a bar after the performance. And everyone’s talking about an opera that took place other than where they saw it. You don’t need to be present to win!
Greg,
Count me in as a fan of the moviecast, having seen four of them this year. I didn’t notice the manicure thing either, but – conceding the points made by you and Lisa/Bill – it was still a great experience. Even though we have a pretty good opera company here in Minneapolis/St. Paul, it’s still a great opportunity to see grand opera on a much larger scale than the Minnesota Opera can manage.
Quick response to your question on the second intermission feature – I thought the big problem was that it was such an abrupt transition from the end of Angelica. There needed to be some time to decompress, to get back together after the emotion of the finale of Angelica (depending on what you think of that opera as a whole), that the introduction of the feature was just too abrupt – even cutting off the curtain calls. (Although, considering th length of the feature, I understand why they had to do it.) It required you to become interested quickly in it, when what the mind really needed was time savor what it had just seen.
Greg,
In answer to your question, to quote one of my favorite teachers, “it depends.” A couple of the Minnesota Opera’s productions in the last season have gotten panned for being, essentially, semi-staged concerts – in other words, close your eyes and you hear beautiful music, but if you’re watching the actual production, it’s a very static thing; not compelling theater, in other words.
In this sense, a danger for the Minnesota Opera, as I suppose it would be with many regional operas, is that people see the big Met productions and are disappointed with what the M.O. has to offer – smaller scale, more minimalist, a little too avant-garde (staging Orazi e Curiazi in the Civil War south, for example).
But that’s really comparing types and quality of productions, and that’s not necessarily what I meant to do. At the first couple of showings we went to, the audience in the movie theater seemed demographically younger, was excited, enjoying being there (for Trittico the audience seemed much older, make of that what you will), and if one can get this newer audience excited in opera and wanting to see it live on stage, I think that would be very good for M.O.
To be frank, and I’ll be happy if someone has better info on this than I do, I haven’t seen much in the way of a tie-in between the operacasts and the M.O. – all the publicity has come from Minnesota Public Radio, and I haven’t really seen much of a presence by M.O.
In short, I think the opportunity for marketing the M.O. is there, and if they can capitalize on the excitement from the operacasts (they expanded showings to two screens in the theater we went to), it could be very good. You know, you don’t have to go to New York or Chicago to see great live opera – come to St. Paul. The operacasts could definitely be seen as competition, but marketed the right way, and with some programming thought by M.O., they could be very good for us as well.
On the topic of Intermission Conversations, I agree that much of it is “Self-Congratulory Crap”. But not always; a few years ago I listened to the Met’s broadcast of Handel’s “Rodelinda”, and was absolutely riveted by the discussion, which featured three of the singers (Renee Fleming, David Daniels and Stephanie Blythe) and the conductor (Harry Bicket). They talked about the music, about the specific technical challenges, about other singers in these roles, all in a very serious and non-condescending way. They talked about what Handel’s music meant to them, and about the reaction of the audiences to his music today. It was absolutely fascinating. These were artists talking about their craft in a way I’ve rarely heard. This sort of thing does not have to be reduced to platitudes and self-congratulations.
iPod Touch 2gen no multi task, hardware will not run it. Same with the iPhone 3g, Got the impression you need at least 32 or 64mb device to run it. He did say some of the 4.0 will work. Be nice to get folders to better organize apps. Not going to buy a new phone, or touch just to get multi task.