Category Archives: Performance review – MetHD

L’Amour de Loin in HD

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Averse as I have become to the Met’s HD broadcasts the lure of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin in a new production by Robert Lepage proved too strong.  I’m glad I went.  In fact this was probably the best Live in HD broadcast that I’ve seen.  Lepage’s production is magical and absolutely at one with the libretto and the score.  It’s deceptive simplicity mirrors the same qualities in both.  Basically we are face with bands of light (32000 LEDs) across the stage which change colour as required and provide an ethereal shimmering backdrop.  The chorus, rarely more than their heads or hands or both, appear in tight ranks from among the lights.  There’s a sort of swivelling gantry with a platform at each end that configures to be the various settings for Jaufré and Clémence and there is the Pilgrim and his/her boat.  Simple, configurable, effective and very, very beautiful.  Indeed, Lepage and his team at the top of their game.

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Lulu in HD

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649x486_lulu_introYesterday I went to a Met “live in HD” broadcast for the first time since The Nose two years ago.  It was an interesting and ultimately rather depressing experience.  This review really falls into two parts; a review of the production and performance, including how it was filmed for broadcast, and a piece on how the Met is “presenting” the work and how that seems to fit in with its overall HD strategy.  The latter may turn into a bit of a rant.

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On The Nose

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Today’s MetHD broadcast was Shostakovich’s absurdist opera The Nose based on a short story by Gogol.  It’s about a bureaucrat whose nose falls off.  The nose then gallivants around town impersonating a state councillor while the bureaucrat tries desperately to get it back.  It’s a lovely Shostakovich score but honestly the one joke wears a bit thin when played out over two hours without an interval.  Where’s a Soviet censor when one needs one?

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Finding the Holy Grail

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Yesterday’s Met Live in HD broadcast of Parsifal was one of the best I’ve seen.  The production is highly effective, the starry cast lived up to the hype and the video direction was sensitive and true to the staging.  Any reservations I have about the experience are due to the work itself but that may be matter for another day.  It certainly reinforced my belief, consolidated by seeing Tristan und Isolde twice recently that these big Wagner operas are high risk, high reward.  When they come off they are incredible.  When they don’t it’s six hours of one’s life gone missing.

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More Tudor queens

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confrontationToday’s MetHD broadcast of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda was a bit of a mixed bag.  There were some really good performances.  Joyce DiDonato in particular gave what may well have been a truly great performance and I would have loved to have seen it live.  David McVicar’s production was much better than his Anna Bolena; visually interesting and with some strong dramatic ideas.  However the good was pretty seriously undermined by another really awful piece of video directing by Gary Halvorson.  I guessed it was him after about ten minutes. The incessant use of the nose cam and the incredibly irritating low level tracking shots were a dead give away.  It was a big disappointment since the last two shows I saw, La Clemenza di Tito and Les Troyens, were filmed by Barbara Willis-Sweete and had given me some faint hope that the Met was capable of self analysis and improvement in this area.  Hope that was, alas, sadly dashed today.

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Now includes dwarf tossing

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Berlioz’ Les Troyens is opera on a grand scale.  Only a really big company like the Met could possibly afford to stage it.  Yesterday’s performance used a chorus of 110, a larger orchestra, at least twelve soloists and a bunch of dancers.  It also lasted 5 1/2 hours including the intervals.  Was it worth it?  For the most part I’d say yes.

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Una opera in maschera

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I despair.  I really do.  Yesterday’s MetHD broadcast of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera had so much going for it.  The singing was brilliant and David Alden’s production seemed to have plenty of interesting ideas.  I say “seemed” because we only got the briefest of brief glimpses of it in between the succession of close ups served up by video director Matthew Diamond.  On the odd occasions we got to see more than a head or a body it was usually from a weird angle.  It’s particularly irritating because the two elements of the production that seemed to be most important were the ones most ruthlessly undermined.  Alden’s movement of chorus, supers and dancers and the contrast between what they do and what the principals do seems to be important but who knows?  Similarly his use of contrasting spaces, especially in Act 3, is obviously important but when the viewer gets only a couple of seconds to establish the context before the camera moves in and loses it the effect is fatally weakened.

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Not a potato in sight

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clemenzaToday’s MetHD broadcast was Mozart’s last, and arguably best, opera La Clemenza di Tito.  J-P Ponnelle’s production has been around for a while and offers nothing to offend traditionalists.  There’s not a baked potato, muscle suit or child sacrifice in sight.  The set, maybe more Italian Renaissance than Imperial Rome is elegant, undistracting and very singer friendly.  The costumes are a rather eclectic mix of late 17th century and Republican Rome with a bit of Lady Capulet thrown in but only the black number with the big panniers that Vitellia gets in Act 2 would excite much comment.  Direction then focuses rather on the characters and their relationships.

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A more enchanted island

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Thomas Adès’ The Tempest has had something like eight runs since its premiere at Covent Garden in 2004.  It recently opened at the Metropolitan Opera in a new production by Robert Lepage which was broadcast as part of the Met in HD series this afternoon.  It’s an interesting work musically.  Some of the vocal writing is reminiscent of Britten.  It all tends to a high tessitura for the voice type concerned and goes to extremes in that direction for the soprano part of Ariel where parts are so high that clear articulation of the words is impossible.  Writing for voice and orchestra ranges from dissonant to extremely lyrical (the act 2 duet between Miranda and Ferdinand).  Key and time signature changes are legion and many of the intervals for the singers are extreme.  It must be extremely difficult to perform but it’s rather lovely to listen to.

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L’Elisir di Steakhouse

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Today was the first MetHD broadcast of the season and we got Bartlett Sher’s new production of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore.  It’s what I would call a “steakhouse production”.  It’s like a meal in a top end steakhouse.  Your steak is a fine piece of meat, they don’t mess it up and ditto your baked potato.  And it’s all served in luxurious surroundings with attentive service.  It’s a terrific steak dinner but it costs the same as the tasting menu at a place with two Michelin stars and it’s still just a steak dinner.

So, a brilliant cast; Netrebko, Polenzani, Kwiecien and Maestri, singing and acting up a storm in a production that was pretty much devoid of ideas beyond a few odd costuming choices.  Since when did Italian peasant girls get to dress like they are attending a ball in a Jane Austen novel?  Still the girl singing Nanetta was cute and had the best dress.  Gary Halvorson’s video direction was about par for the course in terms of virtually incessant close-ups.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon but ultimately forgettable.