Met Opera's new Met Player

[richard53dog]

The Met Opera, under Peter Gelb's savvy marketing management has unveiled a new on demand service of materials from its performance libraries.

13 HD performances, 37 televison videos, and 150 audio radio broadcasts are now available with a new fee based service. I haven't looked through the options in depth but it looks that there are monthly subscriptions with unlimited requests as well as fee-per-event options.

Many of Gelb's artistic decisions have come in for criticism but it's hard to fault his marketing abilities. We always hear of the unsurmountable problems with costs, rights, royalties, and permissions attached to (particularly) arts programs shown on TV. Well, he has figured once more on how to solve the problems.

Pretty impressive in my book. Imagine, just for one choice, the Live From Lincoln Center archives made available on demand.

More complete info on Met Player here:

http://www.metoperafamily.org/met_player/

I for one hope that arrangements like this and the more limited (so far) on demand videos of the ROH DonGiovanni and the Paris Opera Cunning Little Vixen become the norm.

[SandyMcKean]

Well, he has figured once more on how to solve the problems.

.....and I think I know how he did it. It's 3 words: The Metropolitan Opera. It rings around the world.

[dirac]

Well, the three words don't resonate in my neck of the woods - we haven't been able to get the radio broadcast in most parts of the Bay Area for some time now. But it's true, Gelb seems to be using the clout of the name in a good way.

Thanks for posting, richard53dog. I hadn't heard about this. Good for Gelb.

[bart]

We always hear of the unsurmountable problems with costs, rights, royalties, and permissions attached to (particularly) arts programs shown on TV. Well, he has figured once more on how to solve the problems.

Pretty impressive in my book. Imagine, just for one choice, the Live From Lincoln Center archives made available on demand.

Absolutely. And Dance in America. Or a consortium of NYCB, ABT, and other companies. Where the Met has ventured successfully (vis-a-vis negotiating the problem of rights), we can hope that others will follow.

I myself wouldn't be interested in the Met subscriptions ($149.99 a year, $14.99 a month, with a discount for Met donors above a certain level). But individual performances (reservable for up to 30 days) at 3.99 and 4.99 (for HDLive performances) are extremely reasonable ... and possibly addictive.

By the way, the Met's third HD-Live performance of the season -- Dr. Atomic -- will be playing in theaters around the world (and live at Lincoln Center) tomorrow afternoon starting 1 p.m. E.S.T.

[zerbinetta]

I myself wouldn't be interested in the Met subscriptions ($149.99 a year, $14.99 a month, with a discount for Met donors above a certain level). But individual performances (reservable for up to 30 days) at 3.99 and 4.99 (for HDLive performances) are extremely reasonable ... and possibly addictive.

By the way, the Met's third HD-Live performance of the season -- Dr. Atomic -- will be playing in theaters around the world (and live at Lincoln Center) tomorrow afternoon starting 1 p.m. E.S.T.

Perhaps addictive enough to lead to a subscription, which makes this a truly clever offer. The level for Met donors is failry low ($250 perhaps), if I remember the e-mails, and would include a subscription to Opera News, among other perks.

The Dr A is a wow. Amazing Alan Gilbert and Gerald Finley; slyly funny Eric Owens. How it will translate to the screen is another question but the Met HDs I've seen so far work really well on the big screen. It will be interesting to see how well they translate to the small screen.

[bart]

Perhaps addictive enough to lead to a subscription, which makes this a truly clever offer. The level for Met donors is failry low ($250 perhaps), if I remember the e-mails, and would include a subscription to Opera News, among other perks.

Right. It's one level up from the minimal contribution necessary to get Opera News. The deal is good and worth doing if one is not already a member. I love the cleverness of it, too: once you subscribe (or even if you just buy one view at a time) you become a member of the "met opera FAMILY," thus available to be seduced to even higher levels of involvement and contribution.

I love the way financial transactions are being sold as "family relationships" by so many organizations. Just think: me, Netrebko, Villazon, and Fleming sitting around the dining room table and bickering about Verdi productions.

The Dr A is a wow. Amazing Alan Gilbert and Gerald Finley; slyly funny Eric Owens. How it will translate to the screen is another question but the Met HDs I've seen so far work really well on the big screen. It will be interesting to see how well they translate to the small screen.

Everyone has GOT to give this experience a try. The theater we attend is full of real opera goers, though probably stacked more in the direct of elderly retirees than one might find elsewhere. They (we) may chatter, wander around, and even eat lunch in our seats before the production, but the silence and immobility in the seats is almost 100% when the performance starts.

The videography -- on the very LARGE screen -- is amazing. It's well beyond what we got used to on Great Performances, for instance. I've seen them all so far and can't recall a single false moment, camera error, or directorial blunder.

It's not really "live," of course, and it's no substitute for sitting in a theater. But it's miles ahead of your average dvd or even your average theatrical performance on film. It seems to be a new category. I wish I had the skill to put this into words.

[zerbinetta]

Well, it is live if you see it at the initial broadcast, just at one remove. Any glitches are there for all the world to see. I don't know if they "fix" these later or even if there have been any.

So did you go to Dr A?

[kfw]

The Dr A is a wow. Amazing Alan Gilbert and Gerald Finley; slyly funny Eric Owens. How it will translate to the screen is another question but the Met HDs I've seen so far work really well on the big screen. It will be interesting to see how well they translate to the small screen.

Everyone has GOT to give this experience a try. The theater we attend is full of real opera goers, though probably stacked more in the direct of elderly retirees than one might find elsewhere. They (we) may chatter, wander around, and even eat lunch in our seats before the production, but the silence and immobility in the seats is almost 100% when the performance starts.

The videography -- on the very LARGE screen -- is amazing. It's well beyond what we got used to on Great Performances, for instance. I've seen them all so far and can't recall a single false moment, camera error, or directorial blunder.

It's not really "live," of course, and it's no substitute for sitting in a theater. But it's miles ahead of your average dvd or even your average theatrical performance on film. It seems to be a new category. I wish I had the skill to put this into words.

I found this afternoon's Doctor Atomic broadcast powerful and absorbing. No, the sound wasn't quite live, and we missed the full effect of the ambient sound effects used to supplement the orchestra in this production, which apparently seem to come from multiple directions at the Met itself. And I could have used a slightly bigger screen, one that would have filled the entire width of the stage at our lovely historic theater here in Charlottesville. But the filming -- or rather, videography, as you say -- was just fantastic. Occasionally we got a shot far back enough to just see Alan Gilbert's hands as he conducted, but most of the time it was mid-range and closeup views that made the most of the plot, and of the acting, which was reallly outstanding, especially that of Gerald Finley and Sasha Cooke at Robert and Kitty Oppenheimer. Each broadcast has a singer for a host. I loved having Susan Graham interview Finley just after his big aria at the end of the first act, and John Adams was up next.

To anyone actually at the Met for one of these broadcasts, beware the cameras! Just before the overture we saw one couple in what looked to be an intimate conversation.

[bart]

Well, it is live if you see it at the initial broadcast, just at one remove. Any glitches are there for all the world to see. I don't know if they "fix" these later or even if there have been any.

So did you go to Dr A?

Yes, and impressive it was. Each of the two screening rooms were about 2/3 filled -- about 300 in each, which was fewer than for Salome a couple of weeks ago. The audience seemed knowledgeable about the history, open to the music, and very attentive to the moral and personal issues raised by the libretto.

I like Adams, but a little goes a long way. Act I seemed to me to be much stronger than Act II. Oppenheimer's aria set to John Donne's sonnet "Batter My Heart," was the highlight for me. Very close to it was the sensual, almost hallucinatory aria addressed to his wife as they lie in bed. I sat up straight in my chair as the chorus sang a rather terrifying portion of the Baghavad Gita evoking Vishnu. So powerful was this that I actually jotted down some of the phrases: "terrible with fangs, oh Master; all the world is fear-struck." The music expresses this maravelously.

At the conclusion of the opera, the assembled scientists, military men and women, and support staff stare out over the audience, awaiting the explosion. This sequence showed the advantages and the disadvanges of opera on video. Each chorus member and super had been given the name of someone really at Los Alamos in 1945. Many wore name tags with the photographs of the person they were representing. It was wonderful to see the camera as it dwelt on the faces of so many choristers staring ahead waiting. Each person had his or her own personal way of suggesting the excitement, awe, and/or fear they were feeling. Each was, in those last minutes, rather alone.

On the other hand, the overall stage picture in this scene must have been much more impressive in the theater. As the countdown progresses, the mountains in the background slowly rise. Tall structures on either side of the stage begin to tilt forward, leaning ominously over the assembled people and gradually dwarfing, compressing and threatening them. The cameras could not convey this effect completely. It must have been incredible in the theater.

My biggest gripe: Sellars' libretto veers between effective and the over-cooked. He does not seem to know when enough is better than more. Do we really need the introduction of a Native American earth mother, singing what appears to be a traditional song, to make us aware that the original inhabitants of this desert were deeply attuned to nature, while the scientific interlopers manipulate and misuse nature and risk destroying it? Do we really need to be reminded -- as we are when the opera concludes the spoken words of an unseen Japanese mother asking for water for her children -- that the bomb was really used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wiping out two cities and killing masses of civilians? That final bit was superfluous, didactic and theatrically lame.

[zerbinetta]

It was incredible in the theater. We will see it again next week when we can pay less attention to the titles and focus where we wish.

I've just used the handy ballettalk Amazon link to order the DVD of the original Sellers production. I am a Sellers fan and perhaps seeing it the way he imagined when he was writing it would address those issues which bother bart.

[kfw]

Do we really need to be reminded -- by concluding the opera with the spoken words of an unseen Japanese mother asking for water for her children -- that the bomb was really used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, wiping out two cities and killing masses of civilians? That final bit was superfluous, didactive and theatrically lame.

I found the first act stronger than the second as well, but I found the ending powerful because it was so understated. I knew about the masses in the two cities. This quietly, and not at length, gave us one voice and one family.

[bart]

Unfortunately, we didn't set up a Dr. Atomic thread, so there are references in several locations.

I found the first act stronger than the second as well, but I found the ending powerful because it was so understated. I knew about the masses in the two cities. This quietly, and not at length, gave us one voice and one family.

I had not even considered the matter of "one voice and one family," and thanks for giving me something to think about. The "voice" is soft, tentative, almost apologetic, almost child-like -- quite different from the powerful declamatory style of much of the opera. I'm beginning to think I missed the feeling of the conclusion. I wish I could see it again. (But, with Met Player, I I'll be able to. Only $4.99. )

Helene, on a Pacific Northwest Ballet thread, refers to her own experience of the HD-Live Dr. Atomic, which see saw at a 10 a.m. "matinee" before having to drive immediately to the live ballet performance:

My head was still in "Dr. Atomic" from the morning when I attended yesterday's matinee, and attending the opera and getting out of Pacific Place parking made me miss the first half of "A Garden". (Note to self: park in one of the surface lots to get out quickly.)

Helene, if you are also reading this thead, I'd be interested in hearing more about what your transition from one form to the other was like. Tthe Met's HD-Live for me is SO large in scale -- yet, paradoxically, so intimate in its relationship to the performers. I really can't imagine having to go directly from the movie theater to another performance where the scale was so different not to mention the demands made on the observer. The contrast must be even greater, I imagine, when the subject mattere is as unqique and powerful as Dr. Atomic's. 24 hours after the performance, the opera still occupies a big chunk of my mind, feelings, and visual/aural memory. I really do think that the large-screen HD format is contributing to this.

Also: thanks, Helene, for your comments about Adams' score. :

"Dr. Atomic" was even more on my mind during this program, since three of the scores -- by Spinei, Reich, and Willems -- had electronic and/or minimalist elements in common with the Adams score. However, these scores underlined the differences in the Adams score, one I thought had more in common with "Elektra", which played last month at Seattle Opera. The sonic painting of the Adams score and the way in which it shifted to indicate the psychology of the characters was mesmerizing and more evocative of the Strauss score than its more structural relatives that I heard in the "New Works" program.

Your comparison to Elektra makes great sense to me. (I haven't seen this for at least 10 years.) I also agree with you about the way the music transforms itself in relation to the psychology, and changing feelings, of the main characters.