The Metropolitan Opera

Would it be a stretch to say that die-hard opera fans are sort of like the music world's equivalent of "old media." (We wonder how much opera is being purchased on iTunes.) Perhaps not—beginning on Oct. 22 they can get online subscriptions to 120 audio recordings and 50 full-length videos of Metropolitan Opera performances. As the Associated Press notes, it will be the first time "Legendary performances at the Metropolitan Opera of La Boheme with Luciano Pavarotti and Otello with Placido Domingo" will be available on the Internets. All for a recession friendly $14.99 a month! More info on the service here.

We’ve never seen an opera at the Met. It’s one of those things that has been discussed as a sort of thing-to-do-while-you- live-in-New-York, but since we’ve been here for eleven years, and aren’t going anywhere, what’s the rush? But we’ll admit that we would have been intrigued by the thought of seeing an opera by pop diva Rufus Wainwright, especially since it’s about a “day in the life of an aging soprano in 1970s Paris,” as the New York Times puts it. Sadly, however, plans to bring Mr. Wainwright’s work to the Met have fallen apart, because of his insistence that the work be presented in French.  read more »

The Metropolitan Opera has scrapped its usual summer parks series and replaced it with one big, free concert this year.  read more »

Donizetti's two-act opera La Fllle Du Regiment will make its transfer from London to the Met next week (the Times across the pond called it and "exceedingly yummy operatic cake”), but you can check out a free dress rehearsal at 11 a.m. on this Friday April 18. Actors including Tony Award winner Marian Seldes, playing the Duchess of Krakenthorp, Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego-Florez will answer your questions after the performance. You can make reservations now (limited to two per person) by calling the Met's ticketing services at 212-362-6000. The opera's opening night will be April 21 and performances will run until May 26.

Over the weekend, Franco Zeffirelli, the famed Italian film, opera, and theater director best known for his 1968 film version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, was honored by the Metropolitan Opera for decades of groundbreaking service to the institution. The hosannas culminate today with a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria. Stars from Mr. Zeffirelli's film and stage productions are slated to attend, including soprano Angela Gheorghiu and actors Jeremy Irons, Lynn Redgrave and Eli Wallach, cabaret legend Barbara Cook, designer Oscar de la Renta, and Cardinal Edward Egan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York.

"I have always been full of doubts," Mr. Zeffirelli told The Associated Press, adding with a chuckle: "But in the end, I have to agree that I'm quite a good director."

At this rate, the surgeon general could issue a warning that singing at the Metropolitan Opera is hazardous to one's health. According to the Associated Press, illnesses have knocked out stars at dizzying speed, with six singers making unscheduled debuts in leading roles over 13 days. Three tenors appeared as Tristan, one of whom stopped the show when a set malfunction sent him tumbling into the prompter's box, while tenor Ben Heppner missed the first four performances because of a blood-borne infection that abscessed in his pelvic region. Yikes!  read more »

If you have fifteen dollars and are not afraid of heights, you can always go see an opera at the Met.

The performance will be excellent; but if it isn’t, it hardly matters—the walls are covered in velvet, the ceilings are painted gold, and there are more strange people to watch during intermission than at a medieval Silk Road bazaar.  read more »

The Metropolitan Opera has canceled the on-demand cable broadcasting of eight operas that will be transmitted live to movie theaters this season due to worries from theater operators that making the performances available on T.V. might impact the size of the movie theater audiences, according to the New York Times. The operas were to appear on-demand 30 days after each movie theater showing, and the operators felt that was too short a window of time, the Times reports.  read more »

Tonight, when Lorin Maazel, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, lifts his wand to conducts the opening of Wagner’s Walküre, it will be his first appearance at the Met since January 1963 — when he was just 32 years old. That was "when top tickets were $11 instead of $375, Robert F. Wagner was mayor, and the Met was still on Broadway between 39th and 40th Streets," writes Daniel J. Wakin of the New York Times.  read more »

The Met’s production of Hansel and Gretel will be broadcast live in high-definition on New Years Day at 1 p.m. The Walter Reade Theater and the Brooklyn Academy of Music are both participating in New York. Tickets can be found here.  read more »

Benches. Theater houses. Galleries. Toilet seats. It seems like the arts world has been tagged with the name of Mr. and Mrs. Rich Person from top to bottom. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times wonders: Where are the anonymous donors? "Attending a performance can be like leafing through somebody else’s high school yearbook," her wrote in Sunday's Times. "Who are all these people? Should I know? Should I care?  read more »

Want to fast-forward through the snoozy parts of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette? (Like, who doesn't, right?) You'll be able to in January, when the Metropolitan Opera will be available pay-per-view through a deal with In Demand.

Variety reports:

"This deal is a logical outgrowth of our arrangement to transmit eight of our operas this year to more than 600 movie theaters throughout the globe," said Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met.

Tens of thousands of moviegoers bought $18 tickets to catch a live Saturday-afternoon Met Opera performance last year, a price that goes up to $22 for eight separate operas, roughly one a month, this year.

Rob Jacobson, president and CEO of In Demand Networks, said that as many as 30 million digital-cable subscribers will gain access to the eight monthly operas.

The Metropolitan Opera has tripled the number of movie theaters presenting high-definition broadcasts of performances during the 2007-08 season after the dramatic success of its debut series of live opera transmissions last season. It also has increased the number of operas to eight from six.  read more »

Metropolitan Opera director Adrian Polk will stage the company's third procution of Giuseppe Verdi's interpretation of Shakespeare's Macbeth starting tonight at 8 p.m. He told The New York Times:

“When Verdi was writing ‘Macbeth’ in 1847, Europe was crackling with unrest. The story he chose to dramatize — about civil war, about a great general who has become a bloody tyrant and has to be replaced with foreign aid — is in a sense the history of the world since 1945. Look at Cuba. Look at Zimbabwe. Look at Southeast Asia or South America.”

In the Met production, which opens Monday evening, Mr. Noble exercises the modern director’s prerogative, introducing firearms into an arsenal that also includes the obligatory swords and daggers. Potentially more radical is his take on the witches, following the lead, he has said, of Diane Arbus, whose eerie camera sought out the freaks and grotesques on the fringes of American society. All signs point to a serious, maximally “Shakespearean” approach to Verdi’s adaptation.

For a sneak preview, check out the shadowy sets and robust vocals in this video of dress rehearsals from the MetBlog. You can also watch Mr. Polk work with his Lady Macbeth on a crucial scene in this video.

In an interview for the blog, baritone Zeljko Lucic said:

“There’s no other title hero in any of Verdi’s operas like Macbeth,” says Serbian baritone Zeljko Lucic, who sings the role in Adrian Noble’s new production. “It’s his ambition that leads him to crime, disaster, and ultimately to his death. Like every tragic hero, he falls victim to a side of his own nature that he doesn’t understand, that forces him to do the exact opposite of his principles.”

The best seats for tonight's performance are sold out, but tickets are available here.

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