Duped at the duplex
I've always been a big fan of filmed performances. Films and television recording from the famous Chichester festival production of Uncle Vanya (Olivier, Redgrave, Plowright, Thorndyke et al) and the National Theatre of GB's Three Sisters (Olivier, Bates, Plowright, et al) the incredible DDR films of Berliner Ensemble productions of Brecht plays right up to Peter Stein's massive staging of Goethe's Faust are fascinating and rewarding documents. Opera films from the old Soviet Union plus more DDR films of Walter Felsenstein's legendary Komische Opera productions are equally great documents of a styles long gone but still referred to by new generations of producers.
With much anticipation I went to a preview screening of the High Definition Metropolitan Opera telecasts which will begin later this month at Cinema Nova in Cartlon. After the initial screenings of these HD video recordings earlier this year in the USA I was expecting something really exciting. The opera that was chosen for the preview was The Magic Flute, an recording not included in the public screenings. As 'Flute' for me will always be the one opera that was bettered on the screen than any other stage performance thanks to Ingmar Bergman's film version from 1975 I went in happy. As soon as it started my heart sank. I was expecting the production that had just played the Met and that had been such a success at Covent Garden earlier (and which featured a demonic Diana Damaru as the Queen of the Night). This was the "Lioned King-ed" version by Julie Taymar that combined the worst elements of The Lion King, Cirque de Soliel and a bad family day at Gaswork's arts park. The Three Ladies had awful fake heads hovering above their own (with their faces blackened) and fake hands that made them look like a trio of Munch screams. Tamino and Sorastro looked like Nanki-Poo and the Mikado and Papageno had green combination underwear and wicker-work grid-iron football protection gear (including a wicker-work cup that doubled as his mouth padlock ! EEEuuuuh! lets not get Freudian here!).
If it were only that it was a production that I knew I wouldn't like it would not have been so bad but this was the 'Feel Good" "Family Friendly Flute" which had about 45 minutes cut from it to dumb itself down to a Broadway audience expecting another Lion King. The overture had internal cuts, the Three Ladies' scenes had internal cuts, Tamino's picture aria had the middle cut out, one of the verses of Papageno's entrance song was cut, the Papageno/Pamina duet was cut out entirely. Everything was cut badly and obviously with the exception of "Du Feines taubchen' scene with Monostatos, Pamina and Papageno. Jimmy Levine presided over the shredded affair as though it weren't happening.
You can get an idea, thanks to youtube, of the Munch-Ladies, snot green Papageno and Nanki-Tamino here. Apart from being on a cinema screen what you get on youtube is about what I got at the cinema.
If this wasn't bad enough the sound was worse. This miraculous experience I was expecting was tinny, single channel, low level and coming directly from the screen rather than the cinema speakers. It gets worse, the sound alternated between muffled over bass or screeching over treble as though it were coming from a cheap 'ghetto blaster'.
With the cuts the first act lasted about 55 minutes and as there was no differentiation between the acts (not even a screen title to say 'end of act one') I fled the cinema without seeing act two. The only plus was that Nathan is that a Gunn in your pocket was the Papageno.
The sound was just so bad, it had that 'coming and going' quality like like listening to a cheap transistor radio while driving interstate. In fact it reminded me of listening to Met radio broadcasts on a shortwave radio back in the 1970s (I used to pick up the broadcasts in the middle of the night from some radio station on West Coast USA). Cinema Nova will be asking $25.00 (more for Tristan) a throw to see these films. Meanwhile DGG are releasing recent and historic Met performances on DVD with cleaned up sound and picture. These DVD's retail for about $30.00 (a great selection is available over the road at Readings) and look and sound great on the most basic home TV set. This Magic Flute is not going to part of the public screenings and the rest of the season consists of majors performances that are garnering a lot of attention as they approach and happen but unless something is done about the sound I can't endorse these screenings, especially at the inflated price.
Cinema Nova, Carlton
Weekends from 29 December
Update: I saw Gounod's Romeo et Juliette which is a supreme example of 'Met-stravagance'. The foreshadowing of Juliette's death was clever in this otherwise waxwork monolith as stilted is style as the Paris Opera was in the 19th century that coined it. The sound is still problematic. I listen to the audio broadcasts on satellite radio a week or so before the films hit town and the sound on my tiny and tinny home speakers still has more focus that the Nova's equipment.
I'm thinking about Peter Grimes although for less than the price of a ticket I can buy the Zurich Opera performance which has zanier production concepts and a mostly non-English cast who struggle with the words.
0 comments:
Post a Comment