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Classical Music As It Was Meant To Be…With Popcorn! |
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The Metropolitan Opera of New York has been doing something revolutionary recently. They have been broadcasting their operas live in high definition to movie theaters across the country. These broadcasts are not just a reproduction of the opera going experience either. They are shot like movies, with the drama that camera angles and editing can bring to a scene. With closeups and panned shots, these broadcasts highlight the beautiful set pieces the Met uses and the wonderful acting jobs that are usually lost when watching opera from the cheap seats in New York. What’s more, you get to bring popcorn!
These broadcasts have been hugely successful. Every time they have been shown they have consistently broken into the top 20 highest grossing films. That is a fact I find amazing and delightful, and I’m sure it makes a lot of Hollywood executives squeamish. It is pretty clear that there is a large swath of America that lacks a world-class opera house but is underserved by Hollywood’s typical offerings. It makes me smile to see Puccini’s “Il Trittico” beating out the likes of “300,” “Grindhouse,” and “Wild Hogs” and it results like this make me hopeful that classical music culture in America isn’t as dead as it sometimes appears to be.
These new broadcasts are how classical music should be presented, and in fact, how they were once presented. Classical music has been a much more social medium throughout history. Much of it was written to accompany church services, and so you could expect to hear singing, and see audience participation and religious rituals as part of the “performance” as a piece was being played. Classical music was popular music at one point. Works drew heavily on folk themes and songs, music was meant to be danced to, and composers were treated like rock stars. Over the years, as modernism began to force classical music to take itself more seriously, concerts became stoic affairs. Today if you attend a concert, you sit, you listen, you clap, and you leave. (And you probably don’t come back, and who could really blame you?) I like opera, yet sitting through a 3 hour performance tests my limits!
It is no surprise that these new broadcasts have struck a chord with Americans all over the country. They provide an easy entry into opera’s intricacies, because the plot is much easier to follow on-screen, and you don’t have to worry about offending the elitist patrons. It is cheaper to go, so you don’t have to feel like you’re risking $80 on something you might not like, and the quality of both the sound and the video is excellent. What’s more, it proves once again that culture is not dead in America. If you make it more accessible, people will come and enjoy it.
More importantly, it proves that opera for the masses doesn’t have to cheapen the art. The people performing are still the top talent in the world, and the broadcast is live and features live musicians under the direction of top conductors. As Alex Ross of the New Yorker puts it:
No sooner did the H.D. phenomenon take off than opera traditionalists started worrying that the technology would distort musical values. They have forecast a dire era of photographable faces and forgettable voices mixed with outbreaks of crossover kitsch. The danger certainly existsâ€â€music lovers have not forgotten that when Gelb ran the Sony Classical label he blemished the universe with James Horner’s “Titanic†soundtrackâ€â€but I’m guessing that the broadcasts will ultimately favor singers who can sing and act, rather than those who simply look good on posters.
It seems that Peter Gelb, the Met’s new director and mastermind behind these broadcasts, has managed to kill two mocking birds with one stone. He has been able to dismiss the critics from the classical music establishment who suggested that movie theater opera would lessen the quality of the art, and he has been able to completely embarrass critics from the popular entertainment world who had written off classical music as having no mass appeal. And he’s not done yet, not by a long shot. This year he put on sold out performances of a new Chinese opera by Tan Dun, unheard of in an institution that prefers to stick with the classics, he has expressed interest in working with Wynton Marsalis and Rufus Wainwright, and has already produced a series of child-focused operas, including a wonderfully designed and abridged version of “The Magic Flute” that was broadcast on PBS this winter.
Gelb, in his vision, has an up-and-coming generation of classical music proponents behind him. In the world’s music schools there is are thousands of young and hip players who want to see classical music brought back to the forefront of the world’s cultural stages. They don’t want a return to the “old” ways of performing the music. Instead, they take a populist approach, encouraging new performance venues, new stagings and productions, and new mediums that speak to our modern way of life. Experiments like the Met’s are just the beginning, and for once, people like me, who love classical music for its beauty but hate it for its elitist attitudes, have something to be excited about.
In classical music, as in all so called “dead” industries, it take a visionary to see potential. I think most classical music lovers have always felt that opera and other stuck-up artforms have some sort of mass appeal, the trick is to bring that appeal to the forefront. It is a trick of packaging and of marketing, but mostly it is one of mindset. Peter Gelb saw the Metropolitan Opera not as a conservative bastion for “high art” whose days were numbered and who’s audience was growing older and smaller by the minute. Instead, he saw a community with a wonderful set of resources and the means to reshape opera for the new century. He saw his chance and he took it, and I am so glad he did.
Have any readers seen these new broadcasts? They are coming to your town soon, and the 2007-2008 season looks like it will be just as excellent. If you have seen a broadcast, what were your reactions? I have some things to say about the broadcast of “The Magic Flute” that I saw, which I’ll leave for the comments, but I’m curious as to what others think about the new developments happening in the world of classical music and if you think this old genre has a chance at tapping into some aspect of the mainstream. I look forward to your thoughts.
Infusing classical music into the coming century’s cultural landscape is the primary challenge of young classical musicians today. I think there is some resentment, as you mentioned, among musicians today of the rise of silence in the concert hall. It’s intimidating and unnatural to only be allowed to react at specified times and a specified manner to something which is designed to elicit intense emotional responses, for one. In the Baroque era, the opera house was a place to gamble, flirt, eat, people-watch, and enjoy the virtuosity of superstar singers and spectacular stage effects. The idea was not to silently sit and clap at the end. Once the concert hall returns to a more socially-friendly model, perhaps society will reopen its minds to the classical music world.
Right on Scho !
I love classical, opera , concertos. I am always amazed at how far ahead of their time classical composers were, and the music although it has been tucked away still is timeless and enduring.
Dont worry about its presence in todays society, its very much there. I myself make it a point to let my neighbors know this every saturday afternoon. I know I confuse them because earlier they would hear Dead Kennedys screaming from my house.
Mostly Americans dont understand the use of classical. They think its a must that everyone dress up like penguins and sit motionless for the whole concert. We dont know how to apply soul to classical like Europeans do.
A lot more Americans like classical than you would think. They just dont want people to know because there is a label of snobbery attached to it.In other countrys its just music. But here it seems to carry a bunch of implications with it. Its kind of like porn. No one admits to watching it,well someone is because it sells more DVDs than hollywood.
And as boring as mainstream music has been lately I dont doubt that it will start appearing in more of a social arena. I think someone is due to put it up in a more enlightend and contemporary manner.
No music can replace the sound of a couple hundred musicians in perfect sync.
Funny but true! It takes a lot of courage to be a classical music lover sometimes.
I wanted to share my thoughts on the Met broadcast of “The Magic Flute” that I saw a couple months ago. I really enjoyed it, and here’s why I think I did:
1. It was short. I’m not saying I can’t sit through a 3-4 hour opera, but pruning this one down to typical movie length (90 minutes) didn’t kill the plot, all the major arias were there, and it was a lot nicer experience.
2. The costumes and sets were wonderful! They were designed by Julie Taymor, who did the costume designs for the broadway production of “The Lion King.” There were a ton of cool puppets (as you can see in the picture above), really great and emotional costumes, and it was just a lot of fun to look at, especially in closeup.
3. It was in English. I could understand the words, the script was modernized, but not silly (no talk about cell phones, that would be ridiculous). It was nice not having to read subtitles.
4. I was at home! I watched it on PBS, so I wasn’t dressed up and I hadn’t paid $80 to see it. Very nice!
Plus, of course, the signing and acting was top notch and the music was superb. It was one of the better opera experiences I’ve ever had, and I can’t wait to live in a town where the Met broadcasts are occuring. Chicago doesn’t have them yet, probably due to the wonderful Lyric Opera down the street…