Cinema Nouveau is currently screening the Metropolitan Opera Series - which were filmed at performances at the famous Metropolitan Opera House itself. The films, thankfully, are not edited to suit MTV-era concentration spans, and all run for about 4 hours.
I went to see the last week of Gounod's Romeo and Juliet. I was the only non-septegenarian in the audience.
Anna Netrebko - at the pinnacle of her opera career - plays a near-flawless Juliet (near-flawless, she misses one or two crucial notes in Act 1, but quickly warms up). She is one of the rare sopranists who are able to combine a voice with an ability to act, and captures something of the innocence and passion of Juliet in her body. I was less impressed with Roberto Alagna, the star tenor, who is not only far too old to play a convincing Romeo (he will turn 45 this year), but is not a particularly strong tenor, either, his voice quite having the range to deal with the arias. Unlike Netrebko, Romeo and Juliet is his first role in a major opera, and I feel that he is too old to be able to really grow into a truly memorable tenor.
The star of the show, of course, is the incomparable Plácido Domingo, opera grandaddy, who conducts the performance. He energises the orchestra, and captures the moods that Gounod imagined far better than the main stars seem able to do.
The staging is not extraordinary, and feels at times a bit clumsy. Of course, it is difficult to make an analysis of the plotting, however, due to the editor's annoying decision to play around with camera angles and cut constantly between close shots of the main singers and wider shots of the stage. I found this terrible distracting. If the purpose of the film was to lend the impression of actually being at the Met, then surely it would have made more sense to simply film the whole thing from one wide camera angle? The opera was plotted to fill the whole stage, and much was lost in the director's snipping, not least of all the illussion of actually being there.
For all of my bitching, it was exciting to see a top performance in far-flung SA, and I thoroughly applaud the Met for their initiative. I only wish that more 20-somethings were using it as an opportunity to discover the magic of opera - rather than being a hall in which 60-somethings fill their time before 7de Laan starts.
Cinema Nouveau Opera Series will continue to play at the V&A until August. Still to see are Donizetti's La Fille du Regimento, Mozart's The Magic Flute, and Puccini's Manon Lescaut.
I went to see the last week of Gounod's Romeo and Juliet. I was the only non-septegenarian in the audience.
Anna Netrebko - at the pinnacle of her opera career - plays a near-flawless Juliet (near-flawless, she misses one or two crucial notes in Act 1, but quickly warms up). She is one of the rare sopranists who are able to combine a voice with an ability to act, and captures something of the innocence and passion of Juliet in her body. I was less impressed with Roberto Alagna, the star tenor, who is not only far too old to play a convincing Romeo (he will turn 45 this year), but is not a particularly strong tenor, either, his voice quite having the range to deal with the arias. Unlike Netrebko, Romeo and Juliet is his first role in a major opera, and I feel that he is too old to be able to really grow into a truly memorable tenor.
The star of the show, of course, is the incomparable Plácido Domingo, opera grandaddy, who conducts the performance. He energises the orchestra, and captures the moods that Gounod imagined far better than the main stars seem able to do.
The staging is not extraordinary, and feels at times a bit clumsy. Of course, it is difficult to make an analysis of the plotting, however, due to the editor's annoying decision to play around with camera angles and cut constantly between close shots of the main singers and wider shots of the stage. I found this terrible distracting. If the purpose of the film was to lend the impression of actually being at the Met, then surely it would have made more sense to simply film the whole thing from one wide camera angle? The opera was plotted to fill the whole stage, and much was lost in the director's snipping, not least of all the illussion of actually being there.
For all of my bitching, it was exciting to see a top performance in far-flung SA, and I thoroughly applaud the Met for their initiative. I only wish that more 20-somethings were using it as an opportunity to discover the magic of opera - rather than being a hall in which 60-somethings fill their time before 7de Laan starts.
Cinema Nouveau Opera Series will continue to play at the V&A until August. Still to see are Donizetti's La Fille du Regimento, Mozart's The Magic Flute, and Puccini's Manon Lescaut.
