Summer HD Festival Soars in Lincoln Center Plaza
Favorite Met Operas Free for Fans
By: Susan Hall - Sep 03, 2009
When the great soprano and administrator Beverly Sills annointed Peter Gelb general manager at the Metropolitan Opera, she may not have had HD broadcasts in mind, but anyone nicknamed "Bubbles" clearly appreciated entertainment value. Entertaining an audience is at the heart of successful art forms. That dictum goes across the board in music -- from Bach to Rap. When a performer is able to reach out and connect, all music is entertaining.
Yet opera continues to intimidate -- still tainted by an exclusive image that it is the province of the rich and socially connected, even though at the Metropolitan Opera House, where evening dress was once de rigeur on Monday evenings, jeans are everywhere.
Mr. Gelb's first note written to his roster of singers is reported to have been brief, "Lose weight." His campaign to help make opera a living form was designed to counter the knee jerk reaction of people unfamiliar with opera, but whose appreciation must be courted for the form to continue to be viable.
No, seduce your audience. Bring them the beautiful music those of us who were weaned on the Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts so love. Deliver it in a package that suits the under forties today, whether they're listening to pop songs, Elgar's "Second Symphony" or an accessible lecture on entanglement physics by a Stanford professor. It's a visual package. The viewer is in and of the moment. It works.
I invite young people to these performances. They cry out, as my young son once did when Sandy Duncan playing Peter Pan, flew over this head, "More." Fourteen year old Maureen, after we sat outside to watch one of these performances, could not wait to attend a live performance in the House. One young lady, invited to attend "Lucia di Lammamoor" last year, demured. "I don't want to watch a sister being bossed around by her brother," she said, after she learned that Lucia was in love, but forced to marry another man.
Teenage boys who had read "Macbeth" in school loved the HD with Maria Ghuleghina -- I can't tell you that they remembered a specific aria or scene, but they will never forget Ghuleghina's white nightgown falling off her shoulders, sex on the stage and blood and gore all over the place. If we want opera to live, we need to pull young people in by whatever means. Once they get hooked on a beautiful aria, they will come back for many more.
This must be Mr. Gelb's notion, and he presented his case with charm in the Lincoln Center Plaza on Saturday, August 29th. (The audience is on to him. He was greeted with bravos before the show began.) Introducing the broadcast of "La Fille de Regiment," he told us that this form had one huge advantage: the scheduled performers will always show up. His personal modesty and humor go a long way to assuaging an audience -- whether he's explaining that Renee Fleming is not feeling well, but will perform anyway, or apologizing for having no live free performances in the New York City parks this summer because of the economy's collapse. Frankly I never heard one note or got a glimpse of a diva in Sheep Meadow when I went, so it's a pleasure to have opera up close and personal in these HD broadcasts.
Natalie Dessay has a comedian's sense of timing and her role as a smitten young girl brought up by a regiment of fathers gives her talents full reign in "La Fille de Regiment." As an opera buff, I enjoy the voice most, and Dessay's is inarguably glorious. I keep trying to nail the quality in words -- impossible. But here goes. This delicately light voice, bell-like, is at the same time very full. "Big" is a word used to describe a voice that fills the hall but it projected deliberately out at us. Dessay's voice seems to blow over the hall, an intoxication like nitrous oxide bubbles.
Dessay is a perfect performer for HD. The recently deceased soprano Hildegard Behrens once said there was no divide between acting and singing. "Music comes out of the dramatic context." Dessay too has great respect for the acting part of opera.
Surely when Juan Diego Flores sings his nine high C's in "Fille" nothing else is required to be capitvated. He is of course blessed with matinee idol good looks. Eye candy helps in the HD form where all performers are close to us. Anna Netrebko is incredibly beautiful, an excellent actress, and saucy. Playing Juliet in Charles Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet," she and her Romeo (Roberto Alagna) giggled their way through marriage vows sung by the Friar. One of my frequent neighbors in the rafters at the Met claimed that her binoculars were strong enough to pick up this detail. Mine are not, and I enjoyed sharing the moment. The director must have agreed, because he also included Netrebko exiting toward the camera making a funny face.
Curiously, while I have problems with Netrebko missing her notes, talking to a sampling of audience members on Sunday evening, I found myself in a chorus of one. Between her lively performance, her enticing good looks and her interplay with Alagna, no one had a negative word to say about one of the Met's biggest stars. That answers one question about casting for the HDs. Alagna strides like a cock of the walk, a bit broad for Romeo, but he's a wonderful performer with a beautiful voice, so he is an obvious choice for these transmissions.
Because Dessay's vocal production involves not so subtle movements of her mouth and face, the camera seemed cruel to come in on extreme close up. Pulling together all the strands to film opera may be so demanding that details like this fall through the cracks. Ms. Dessay, right at the top of the list of Met stars, deserves to be treated more kindly by the camera.
No question the audience of all ages and hues has a wonderful time at these evening broadcasts in the Plaza. (They continue through Monday, September 7th). We are moved to applaud performers without a thought to the fact that they are deaf to our appreciation. The group pleasure is one reason to go to darkened movie theaters to share our passion and pleasure. If you haven't attended an HD broadcast, try one. They do not disappoint.