An Opera at The Met

When I watched Moonstruck in my uni­ver­sity “Music in the Movies” class, we stud­ied a scene where Ronny Cammareri (Nicholas Cage’s char­ac­ter) has a date with Loretta Castorini (played by Cher) at the Metropolitan Opera. She takes off her coat, and he says, “Thank you…You know it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Opera”.

In his face, you see that he’s not talk­ing just about the opera. After los­ing his hand and fiancée, he’s at the Met, arguably the most pres­ti­gious opera house in the world, with a beau­ti­ful woman in a black dress, and he’s missed this.

Even in the screen­play, there are set direc­tions for the scene when they arrive:

CROWDS OF PEOPLE in beau­ti­ful clothes fill the plaza cre­ated by the three great build­ings. A glo­ri­ous foun­tain filled with lights forms the cen­ter­piece. Behind the foun­tain, grand and splen­didly lit, is the mag­i­cal Metropolitan Opera House.

Ever since, The Met has been this place I’ve dreamed of attend­ing. Unfortunately, it’s in New York, and decent seats can cost over $100.

So when my local movie the­atre started offer­ing live HD broad­casts of per­for­mances there, I decided I should go. To ful­fill a dream in spirit, if not in the flesh.

The Story

The opera of Orfeo ed Euridice by Gluck is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus, the father of songs, who ven­tures to the under­world to bring his wife, Eurydice, back from the dead. He does this by play­ing his lyre to soften the hearts of the care­tak­ers of Hades.

There are two con­di­tions, how­ever. On their jour­ney back to the liv­ing, he’s not allowed to look at Euridice, nor tell her why. Though she’s beset by doubt and mis­un­der­stand­ing, they make it to the edge of the under­world, only to have Orpheus look back before Euridice is safely through as well, and he loses her forever.

It was cer­tainly the story that drew me more any­thing else. Orpheus not only mak­ing the Gods weep, but seduc­ing the shades with his dul­cet music as well. Defying life and death itself with the power of art. There’s so much emo­tion in it. Orpheus reunit­ing with his wife after death, try­ing to dis­pel her inse­cu­rity, and los­ing her again.

There’s a vari­a­tion in the opera; he sings so mourn­fully again, than the Gods take pity on him and bring her back to life. I’m not sure if I enjoyed this change of story. It smacks of audi­ence paci­fi­ca­tion, going against the authen­tic­ity of the orig­i­nal Greek play.

The Presentation

Before the opera started, there was oper­atic trivia on the screen (much like the Hollywood trivia before a movie), along with live footage of the audi­ence tak­ing their seats and the orches­tra get­ting warmed up. One advan­tage of such a venue is that there was a brief intro­duc­tion and inter­views with Met music director/conductor James Levine and chore­o­g­ra­pher, Mark Morris. The inter­views were great for pro­vid­ing a bit more insight into the per­for­mance before it started.

The cam­eras offered a view that even peo­ple in the front row don’t get. There’s an inti­macy with the singers that can be achieved when you can see their emo­tion, breath­ing, and sweat­ing. Enough that it reminded me of being on stage from my child­hood years of musi­cal per­for­mance. You feel the ner­vous chat­ter of the musi­cians before they began, tin­ker­ing with their instru­ments, warm­ing up their fin­gers, and it all adds to the experience.

I wasn’t used to a woman play­ing the male lead, which they call a “trouser role”. I think a cer­tain amount of chem­istry is needed, and it’s dis­tract­ing with the one gen­der play­ing two because it seems a lit­tle forced. There’s also a cer­tain male tim­bre that’s extremely dif­fi­cult to repro­duce as a woman, and dis­tracts from the will­ing sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief.

The Art

The opera was a through piece, which meant the per­for­mance went for an hour and a half with no inter­rup­tions. That made it very digestible; some­thing I strongly appre­ci­ate, as I can only take so much opera in one sitting.

The music was quite enjoy­able, though my favourite part was when Orpheus goes to the under­world for the first time, and sings for the dead. On the other hand, the dance seemed a lit­tle lack­lus­tre, though I’ve never been one to appre­ci­ate such a medium.

I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed the mod­ern take on it, with the lute instead of lyre. Costumes too were mod­ern. The cho­rus of the dead were meant to rep­re­sent every­one in his­tory, among the faces were mod­ern peo­ple, like Abraham Licncoln, John Lennon, and Babe Ruth.

One thing the direc­tor explained was the extended danc­ing scenes. Composers wanted opera to be a com­bi­na­tion of all art forms, some­thing I pre­vi­ously believed was held by cin­ema. There’s cer­tainly some­thing to be said about the medium of opera in this regard, or per­haps about the lim­i­ta­tions of artis­tic medi­ums in gen­eral. Perhaps they shouldn’t be com­pared, and sim­ply appre­ci­ated for what they can achieve.