The Metropolitan Opera has pioneered a bold new approach to bring opera to the masses by streaming live high definition broadcasts of operas into movie theaters around the world. Since December 2006, they have screened 14 productions over two seasons, with 11 more scheduled for the 2008-2009 season.
The recent performance of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice was a feast for the ears and the eyes, although at the HD screening the eyes had the greatest advantage. At the live broadcast the energy heightened immediately as we watched the opera house audience taking their seats. The screened program then cut to scenes of backstage preparations at the opera, accompanied by interviews with some of the artists involved. For the Orfeo screening, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato led us on the tour, interviewing conductor James Levine and director/choreographer Mark Morris about the production.
From the opening notes of the overture, the orchestra played with vibrant sound and buoyancy. Levine’s conducting revealed both the beauty and the simplicity of the music, moving ably between haunting moments of pathos and lively dance scenes.
Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe triumphed in the very demanding lead role of Orfeo. Though her character rarely leaves the stage, she sang with rich and glorious sound that never seemed to tire. She also rose ably to the singular challenge of a mezzo-soprano playing a male character while HD cameras zoomed in for close-ups. From her first steps on stage she was convincing and moving as a husband mourning his dead wife, and she navigated the scenes of despair and joy without ever dropping character. (The male role of Orfeo was composed originally for a castrato, a man who had been castrated as a boy, thus retaining his soprano singing range. These male roles are now sung by mezzo-sopranos or countertenors).
While the beauty and power of Blythe’s voice shone in the screening, the microphone did seem to compromise her sound in certain ways. There was a slight huskiness in the miked sound that is not present in her voice in the opera house, but I blamed it on the inability of the mic to handle the full power and size of her instrument. The smaller, brighter voices of Heidi Grant Murphy and Danielle de Niese did not seem as much affected by their electronic transmission.
De Niese played a lovely and affecting Euridice. She sang with a fluid, warm tone that well matched her sensitive portrayal. There were a few small points where I wished for a weightier sound, but it was hard to judge whether I would have felt the same way in the live space or not.
Indeed, my two greatest questions in judging the success of these live broadcasts remained the sound quality and the enhanced visuals. Opera is meant to be heard in a live theater space, where the sound waves bounce off the walls around you and travel through your body, creating an experience that cannot be rivaled by any electronic mediation. I knew the theater sound would not be the same as a live space, but was curious to see how great the change would be and how much that would affect my experience. There was certainly some muting of the colors and power of the singing as heard through the microphones, particularly for the larger voices, but a greater difficulty was that the orchestral sound was not correctly balanced with the singing. The orchestral sound was much more present in the screening than it is in the theater. This was distracting in a number of places in the opera, particularly when it threatened to overcome the vocal sound in an imbalance that I know was not heard in the opera house. Part of the problem is that the acoustic and spatial sound of the orchestra playing in the pit is lost in the screening. It was bothersome that the orchestral sound seemed to be coming from the same spatial place as the singing sound (which did not match what our eyes were seeing), but it also sounded like the orchestral and vocal sounds were improperly mixed. One of the great miracles of the trained singing voice is the way that the resonance and intensity of a single voice can cut through the sound of a whole orchestra. I often found myself missing that interplay of resonances.
Visually, I was very curious to see how the stage acting of opera would translate to a movie screen. The acting techniques required to communicate to a 3800 seat opera house are much larger and broader than those required to communicate on HD video, particularly a 10 camera production that includes many close-ups. Stage acting looks bizarrely overdone on camera in most cases, and I was curious how the presence of the camera crew might affect the singers’ acting. It was impressive to see a great level of naturalness and believability in the acting, with no overdone opera gestures. The nuanced expressions and subtle acting choices, particularly of Blythe and de Niese, read very well on camera. Not having seen the live performance in the opera house, it was not possible to know whether the acting seemed more subdued in turn to the live audience, but judging from the strong reviews and impassioned audience reaction it did not seem to be the case. Perhaps the close-ups of true emotion on the singers’ faces in the HD screening help make up for the less affecting experience of hearing the sound through speakers rather than live in the space.
The HD close-ups certainly allowed the creativity and wit of the chorus design to be seen in a way that would have been difficult in the opera house. Isaac Mizrahi, in his costume design debut with the Met, said his design is meant to be the ultimate Greek chorus -everyone who has ever died. The various pans of the chorus singing in the screening allowed the quick-eyed to catch glimpses of Einstein, Queen Elizabeth, Gandhi, Marie Curie, Liberace and many more.
One interesting aspect of the ability to see so many faces on stage clearly for the first time in a performance like this was the mixture of facial expressions on the dancers’ faces. Some of the dancers were better actors than others, but overall, one was struck by the emotion conveyed through bodies and movements rather than through facial expressions, which were often rather flat. Morris’ choreography was woven in an integral way throughout the opera, making the multiple dances seem not just traditional set pieces but rather a natural extension of the drama playing out on stage.
An interesting aspect of Barbara Willis Sweete’s video direction, with ten possible camera angles, was that many different parts of the whole could be focused on during a musical section, a dance or a chorus scene. During the overture, for example, there were multiple shots of different instruments playing, the conductor conducting, the hands of various instrumentalists, etc. While there was a certain fascination involved with seeing various close-ups of the orchestra pit afforded to no one in the opera house, I was also aware that my overall appreciation for the overture as a piece of music was diminished by switching my attention between all these different points of interest. In a similar way, the cleverly choreographed dance scenes in the opera were usually shown with a number of close-ups on various dancers, making it difficult take in the full effect of the choreography as it filled the stage. I could not help but feel that choreography that was designed to be danced and seen on a whole stage suffered from being seen in pieces. I did enjoy seeing the detail of the dancing in small sections, but felt that the video directing did not spend enough time on wide shots.
Overall, the HD video strengths were also its weaknesses. The intensity of seeing the singers and dancers and set up close is a rare experience in an opera house the size of the Met. As a singer myself, it is fascinating to watch the technical details of a singer’s vocal production, and moving to see sensitive acting wedded to expressive singing. However, as interesting as these details are, the overall experience of the opera as a whole, the great sum of the parts, was weakened by being seen and heard in a way that opera was not created to be performed. Mark Morris described Orfeo ed Euridice as true to the original conception of opera as the greatest of the arts (music, theater, dancing) combined. The HD transmission did justice to each of these aspects, but did not sum them up in the way an experience in the live space can.
One of the big questions raised by this screening is whether this approach will bring opera to new audiences, a goal for struggling opera houses everywhere. These HD performances are selling out all over the country, but at least in my screening, the audience looked very similar to a Saturday matinee at the opera house-I was by far the youngest person in the audience. While I thoroughly enjoyed the screening, I would not choose it over a live experience in the opera house. But for those who do not have access to the Met or a similar quality of opera house, these screenings are wonderful opportunities to hear world-quality singing and see innovative and challenging new productions of both well-known and new operas. I can also see the advantage for demystifying the opera experience for someone who may not have ever been in an opera house before, or had never had an all-encompassing experience of opera well done. Since video is a much more familiar medium and these productions are well-directed and engaging, I do believe live HD screenings could open the door for someone to be drawn to live opera in a theater as a result.
Participating movie theaters include ones in every state except Alaska, as well as 30 other countries around the world (with theaters being added on a regular basis). See www.metoperafamily.org for information on participating theaters and schedules. The remaining productions this season are Madama Butterfly (March 7), La Sonnambula (March 21), and La Cenerentola (May 9).
Barbara Willis Sweete Danielle de Niese Gluck Heidi Grant Murphy Isaac Mizrahi James Levine Mark Morris Metropolitan Opera Orfeo ed Euridice Stephanie Blythe