The Met Opera HDs at Lincoln Center
Third Season of Live in HD
By: Susan Hall - Sep 20, 2010
The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD Summer Broadcasts which ended on September 6th.
The Metropolitan Opera generously presented 1tenHD productions from season’s past in the plaza at Lincoln Center to end the summer and herald the Met's fall season, which opens with a new production of Das Rheingold. We viewed The Magic Flute, Dr. Atomic, and Carmen, all of which we’d seen previously.
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, talks about audience building and revenue producing from the HDs, first broadcast live into movie theaters, then encored and later offered as DVDs. More than anything else, the HD’s enthrall a new and unexpected audience like the youngsters seated in front of me for Carmen. We all laughed out loud at Carmen’s charming antics and bold daring.
Decades ago, Live from Lincoln Center was conceived as a revenue producer, using events that had been paid for by ticket sales and fund-raising in their venues of origin and looking for the same elements the Met now tries for in broadcasts to movie theaters. The producers speculated that the shared risk of a live event would excite audiences.
The huge expense of mounting an opera is written off against ticket sales in the house, and distribution fees added to the union contracts of stagehands and chorus. That and increased performers’ fees provide the new distribution mechanism of theatrical broadcasts. Peter Gelb reported that the Met cleared $8 milloon last year from ticket sales through Live in HD broadcasts.
It’s difficult to calculat exactly what this means. In public tax forms filed in 2008, the Met reported $ 10 million in HD tickets sales, and about $5 million for the equipment trucks required to put these shows into the theaters. These figures do not include the portion of Met overhead attributed to HD production, salaries to the director of HD broadcasts and other production staff. This makes the added revenue portion of the equation difficult to compute
Audience building is reported to have worked in local opera houses around the country. People who can’t get to New York have purchased tickets at their neighborhood opera houses. Gelb reports that single ticket sales are up at the Met. Some of this probably comes from newly developed audiences.
This year the HDs will be broadcast to 1,500 venues in 46 countries. That's 300 more than last year, adding 100 theaters in the U.S., to bring the domestic total to 620, including the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown and Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield. Last season the broadcasts were confined to the Mahaiwe Arts Center in Great Barrington. So this makes the Met now available througout the Berkshires.
Here’s what we think may be the biggest selling point of all: These HDs are dynamite. They capture the essence of opera, a drama set to glorious music, solo, ensemble and choral singing, dance, a stupendous orchestra – the best multi-media event available. Young people come in droves because multi-media is their form. Opera has had over four centuries to develop, so the musical and visual opportunities it affords have been honed for pleasure over a very long time.
Talking to Patricia Racette after viewing the HD of Peter Grimes, in which she portrays Ellen Orford, I remarked that while I’d loved the production in the house, it was even more enjoyable HD. She agreed. Racette of course, in addition to having a lovely voice, tends to every detail of her acting. In Butterfly her tiny steps and downcast eyes fluttering are irresistible. In Grimes her maternal feeling for the boy, and tenderness for the deeply troubled Grimes, are even more compelling on the big screen screen.
Dr. Atomic, which got lost on the stage in the house, is brought up close and personal in HD. The complex and driven figure of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who Gerard Finley has made into a signature role, ran the Manhattan Project during the creation of the atomic bomb. In the HD he is both tortured ad understandable. His wife Kitty, sung by mezzo Sasha Cooke, is touching and delicate, lost in her husband’s torment and her own desire. No need to quote Aristotle on why drama reaches us humans, but that it does is more clear in the HDs than it is in the distant stage in the house.
Julie Taymor designed and directed The Magic Flute for the Met. Clearly her fantasy figures were meant to be seen straight on by an audience in the ‘house’. In the HD, the figures seem flimsy, and often you can see through them when you shouldn’t. Since this HD was directed by Gary Halvorson, who does much of the superb work in the HD series, I can only think that this problem was insurmountable.
The Met did not attempt to capture the William Kentridge production of The Nose, but perhaps Kentridge’s own film would have been a guideline. Taymor directed Frida and her forthcoming The Tempest without a glitch. When she designs for the screen, she’s enchanting. Clearly the unanticipated difference in media was a problem here.
The quality of live sound, of course, cannot be duplicated. It proves to be problematic in some of the HDs. Unevenness is evident everywhere in Carmen. Both the orchestra and Elina Garanca singing Carmen are wonderful, but the other singers and chorus get mangled perhaps because the Lazy Susan turntable at center stage is unmanageable. The six tenors who sing Armida complained because Rene Fleming was the only singer to be miked in HD. Fleming, of course, has a small voice which is much easier to hear in the HDs than at the Met itself.
When the Met casts good actors, which it usually does in the HDs, the audience is swept up in story and can’t wait to get back to the next one. Composers like Mozart and Verdi would have loved these productions, reaching wider audiences and keeping their work alive.
We still crave movie-watching in a darkened theater among other people. No matter how easy it is to download a film, shove in a DVD, or open up your mailbox for Netflix, the presence of others enhances the experience. Event producers have discovered this, and among the previews always exhibited in theaters are rock concerts, Live-Aid, and even a Greek play Phedre last summer.
The Berkshire HD season, now in three venues, opens with Das Rheingold on October 9th. A must-see. Must-hear.