I'm fortunate to be married to someone who loves opera as much (or perhaps even more) than I do. In fact, our first date back when we were 19 was to the New York City Opera. Paul was trying to finish a Music Humanities paper at the time and conveniently asked me to go see La Traviata with him for the assignment. Of course, I couldn't resist the opera or the date, and the rest is history. Very convenient indeed!
Well, for our one-year wedding anniversary, he did a little research and discovered that The Metropolitan Opera has been pioneering a new way of disseminating their performances to the public. Today was the first production of the Met that was recorded live in HD and shown at 600 movie theaters all around the world. I often complain that Paul goes over the top with presents or nice gestures for me- so when he told me that for our anniversary we would be seeing the Met live, I almost began scolding him about spending too much money on plane tickets and opera tickets- until he explained to me that we would be watching the Met from the AMC movie theater down the street from our apartment here in SD! Yes, living down the street from a major strip mall has its perks. Although I don't count CPK as one of them. The movies ain't bad though.
The day finally came today, and we joined a nearly full house in the theater for a production of Romeo et Juliette by Gounod. It was a pretty rowdy crowd, which was amusing considering that nearly everyone there seemed to be of the older concert-going public that frequents the La Jolla classical music scene. We were by far the youngest people there. Everyone yelped and hollered when they showed Hollywood action movie previews while we were waiting for the HD broadcast to load. About 20 minutes after the scheduled starting time (10am PST/1pm EST), the opera came on the big screen and we were watching the fabulous Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna live from Lincoln Center in HD.
We've been to the Met Opera several times over the years and usually we were only able to afford the nosebleed seats, so the opera viewing experience wasn't exactly optimal even though it still sounded great from up there. Every visit to the Met was always a privilege and we knew it was one of the things we would really miss about New York when we moved. But I have to say that being able to see an opera from so close up and so many different angles was a completely different experience, and almost topped physically being there if we were to get our usual third tier balcony seats. There was also funny backstage shots of the singers chugging water, joking around, warming up, waving at the camera, and live interviews with Placido Domingo, who was conducting, and the two leads. The performance was absolutely phenomenal and what really got me was being able to see the facial expression of the characters so clearly, which helped conveyed all the tragic emotion of the characters and story. By the end of it, I was bawling my eyes out- and I have honestly never done before while watching opera! I felt pretty silly feeling all of the dark tragedy of Shakespeare and trying to collect myself as we walked out to the smell of buttery popcorn and cheesy movie posters.
This idea has given me a lot of hope for the future of opera and classical music. Though it wasn't reaching a new demographic in La Jolla today, public schools students all over NYC were watching the broadcast in their school cafeterias for free. (An official blog about the broadcast is here.) If kids in the Bronx and Queens can be captivated by opera for three-hours on a Saturday afternoon, I think there is hope that opera can be made accessible to all demographics of the population. There is no reason that a work of art with universal themes like love, betrayal, and rivalry needs to remain beloved only by the upper class, despite the high-brow stigma opera has as an art form. I'm so glad that the minds behind the Met are taking advantage of technology and bringing all of their hard work to the masses in and outside of New York. Being the first broadcast of its kind, it wasn't well advertised around here unless you were looking for it- but I hope in the future that the audience in our theater will become a little more diverse. Plus, everything looks good when its in HD!
Check out the upcoming Met HD broadcasts coming up in your city!
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