Campbell Vertesi

The Chicago Tribune gave a glowing review [registration/bugmenot.com required] to the Met's first season of video broadcasts.  Apart from the reviewer's positive experience, the article mentions some numbers that bear repeating:

• Average attendance is 67%
• More than 500,000 (simulcast) tickets have been sold
• 50,000 tickets were sold in North America for Il Trittico, the latest broadcast

Also worth noting, is that playback quality varies greatly depending on your theatre.  Presumably, some theatres are more used than others to working with digital feeds; I can't think of what else might be getting in the way.

So the idea is catching on.  It seems that the $18 price point is a reasonable one, though I'm sure we'll see some experimentation with that in the next few years.  Apparently the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra is planning a similar set of simulcasts, these ones over the web.  I can only say: finally!

The Internet presents a tremendous opportunity for niche market artists of all sorts, and classical music is not an exception.  We can reach a broader audience, attract the ears of people normally too distant to listen, and actually - gasp - build a fan base from people who normally would not attend a theatre.  I'm excited, anyways.

This evening I'm listening to the Trittico broadcast from the Met.  Apart from some very solid singing,  I'm thrilled to hear fellow blogger Anne-Carolyn Bird sing, and give an interview with the famous Margaret Juntwait!  Also making his broadcast debut this evening was Jeff Mattsey, who sang the title role in Don Giovanni with me in Central City.  Congratulations all round, and kudos to ACB for making two debuts in one night!

Particularly to my friend Jamie Barton from IU.  Well done!  If you can believe it, I used to play poker with that girl... :)

In an open letter to Peter Gelb, fellow blogger A.C. Douglas lambasts the new format of the Met Broadcast "halftime shows".  

Generally speaking, that format comes across as a lame aping — even parody — of the multi-announcer live coverage of a network TV sporting event, complete with the requisite inane, intrusive chatter, and vapid, prole-pandering, locker-room star "interviews."

Before I go any further, I should give a disclaimer: I was never a regular listener to the Met broadcasts before they released their archives - which is to say, before Margaret Juntwait.  Frankly, the productions were too often sub-par for my ears, spoiled as I have been by recordings of the great singers of the 20th Century.  The point is, I don't have any basis for comparison to Ms. Juntwait.

That being said, I kind of like Margaret's little halftime numbers.  The play-by-play of the audience milling around is a bit jarring, but the interviews and commentary are a great idea needing better implementation.  They are certainly not perfect: I'd like them much more if the interviews were pitched above the intellectual level of a retarded baboon. But I like it that the broadcasts now try put some depth behind the performance - talking to the stars and finding out that they're real people, even PERSONABLE people, with opinions about their art.

While I do believe that great art is elitist in nature, I don't think elitism should be an inpenetrable fortress.  Domingo is a great artist to be sure, but does that mean he must be so elevated above the masses as to have no personality?  I say no.  I say that the height of his accomplishment is accented by the fact that he is a human being, with interests and thought and personality like anyone else.  

Let me be absolutely clear here, because there is a fine distinction to be made: I don't care about Domingo's hobbies, his favorite movies, or his best recipe for flan.  I do want to know what he thinks about the music, and his character.  What is his approach to a character like Otello, who is so different from the literary source that is his inspiration?  How has conducting Boheme changed the way he approaches it as a singer?  You see, I am not a fan of denigrating such a great artist with irrelevancies; but I love the opportunity to explore his artistry in direct interview.

These singers are interesting, personable human beings with opinions and thoughts about their art.  I love it when Margaret Juntwait gives them a chance to express some of that.  Without it, a great singer is only as real as a bust of Dickens is real.  Why be satisfied with what we can learn indirectly through their work, when we have the real article here to talk with?

Imagine if you will, the opportunity to interview a great artist in another field.  What questions would you ask Picasso, or Coleridge?  These are the kind of questions that I want to see asked of singers on the great stages of today.

Unfortunately, most of the halftime shows don't satisfy in this regard.  i heard an interview with Phillip Glass - Phillip Glass! - awhile ago, with such scintillating questions as "how many times have you been to the Met this season?" and "do you prefer to conduct your own works, or watch from the audience?"   She may as well have asked about his favorite toothpaste.  Here you have an opportunity to interview one of the major composers of the century, and you ask if he is a season ticketholder.  During this interview, I tried yelling better questions at the radio, but Margaret wouldn't listen.

But the interviews don't have to be like that.  Indeed, I listened a few weeks ago to an interview with the Don Magnifico of the evening, as he - in slightly broken English - explained the duality inherent in his character.  He described the challenges of playing a comic villain, and the things in this role that were of particular difficulty to him.  This was a marvellous interview, which gave me all sorts of new insight into the performance and the performer.

If only all of the interviews could be so fascinating, I would be a complete supporter of the Met's intermission entertainment.  As it is, I can only disagree with Mr. Douglas' appraisal by a matter of degree.  I agree that most of the time, these interviews are an insult to the listener and to the interviewee.  Make the interviews interesting and intellectually/personally engaging however, and you will have a winner in my book.

It seems that the Met video broadcasts have been so popular, they are all earning encore performances!  Bravo!  This evidences a (hopefully not premature) greater public interest in opera than I think anyone expected.  I have my own theories about that - and I blame the Internet.

I blame the Internet for introducing us to a much wider world of musical interest than we ever had before.  Thanks to everything from Napster and Audiogalaxy (may they rest in peace) to Itunes, consumers have found (gasp) a selection of music again!  They have (shock) learned how to experiment with their musical taste!

Remember in the old days, when the only ways to learn about new music were the radio, MTV, and maybe a record store friend?  In those days, the only acts that could catch anyone's attention were the big sellers - the mass market stuff that made it onto the airwaves, or into your local record shop.  Smaller bands and niche genres were SOL.  Even if someone did venture outside of their demographic and chance to recommend an opera singer to you, the likelihood of you actually going and buying a CD to find out was small.

In the age of the internet, musical experimentation has become commonplace, even a social activity.  I can't count the times I've been to a party where the host was keen to show off his/her selection of bands and music I'd never heard of.  Having a distinct and individual taste in your music is now a badge of pride, and sharing niche music a social activity.

Is it any surprise that in this niche-oriented market, opera is feeling increased success?  People are proud of their esoteric taste, and actively hunt out new kinds of music to experience. Today, if someone told you to check out singer  X who's really incredible, you would probably go look her up on Youtube, almost no matter what genre of music she was in.  This is a very good thing.

In the age of niche music, of aural experimentation, opera is popular enough to earn reruns in the theaters.  I say Bravo! 

Just digging this hole further... for discussion on why there might be a bias towards newer recordings, albeit with poorer singing, on Sirius digital radio, please comment on the original post.

I took the time to sit down and make some graphs for you all on the subject, using the extremely small sample size of four days.  I can get the schedule for next week too, but the results would be skewed: they're doing a special week of Levine's favorite broadcasts, so of course all of them would be relatively recent.

With the data available - 4 days, 19 operas (excluding live broadcasts), here is a graph of the broadcasts by decade (click for a larger version):

Total number of repeated broadcasts:10 (approximately 53%)

 Occurrences of singers by name isn't interesting in such a small sample, and with so many repeats.  It is worth noting however that there is no Hines, Siepi, Bjoerling, Del Monaco... 

From a very  limited data set, I have to be careful drawing any conclusions - but this does support my anecdotal evidence.  What is interesting is the 20 year gap in recordings, and that they seem to avoid the 90's and plug the 80's and the very recent recordings... and of course, the number of repeats.  More than half the recordings they play were aired in the previous three days.   That means they got 3 full days of airtime out of fewer than 10 recordings! 

Once this upcoming 'week of Levine' is over, I'll try again for a larger sample size.  Across 19 broadcast time slots, skipping the 40s and 50s isn't such a big deal.  If there's a trend across several weeks though, you can expect another crabby post.

Regular readers (those muscular, witty, discerning people) will know that I recently got a Sirius digita radio set for my car. For the non-tech-oriented: digital radio is a new way to send radio broadcasts, in crystal clear CD quality audio. It works very similarly to a regular radio, except for the quality difference, and that the spectrum is owned by private companies (rather than the FCC). This means that in order to get a channel, you pay a company, rather than a politician. There are several competing systems (XM, Digital Radio, Sirius... more?), but the reason I have Sirius is because of the Met.

Part of the Metropolitan's initiative to release all of their archival broadcast recordings was to purchase a radio station on Sirius, and broadcast met archives, all day long. In truth, it's about 5 full operas a day, with a lot of filler music (lieder, chansons, and other drivel) in between. I love it.

So every morning and night, during my hour commute to/from school, or to/from rehearsal, I get to listen to great singing. But I've noticed a bias in the recordings they play: it seems to be almost always recordings from the last 20-25 years. Maybe this is perception bias - I'm looking up their program schedules now. But it's interesting that I have yet to hear any recordings from the 40's or 50's. This morning I heard my first recording from the 60's... but there's been lots from the 80's and 90's.

The frustrating thing about this time bias is the caliber of the singing: the 80's and 90's were a period of serious decline in the quality of singer on the Met stage. So I've suffered through hours of mediocre warbling, with the occasional redeeming moment when John Vickers or Placido Domingo opens their mouth.

There is also a gaping hole in the repertory of singers I get to hear: hardly any of the real ear-popping greats. How is it that I've yet to hear Jerome Hines, Cesare Siepi, George London, Robert Merrill, Lawrence Tibbett, Richard Tucker, Jussi Bjoerling, Renata Tebaldi, Leontyne Price, Joan Sutherland, Maria Callas or Roberta Peters? How is it possible that this morning was the first Corelli I've heard? This is certainly not a random sampling of Met archives.

There also seems to be a repetition issue. I've heard the same 70's Tozzi/Domingo Faust three times now - a poor showing for Tozzi in this one, too... don't we have any other Fausts to hear? Oh how I would kill to hear a Hines Faust!

As an example: Let's get a sample line up: tomorrow, Friday January 11th, we get:

6:00 AM Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor
2/27/1937-Papi; Pons, Jagel, Brownlee, Pinza (WONDERFUL. I heard it two days ago though. No other Lucias lying around?)

9:00 AM Verdi: La Forza del Destino
3/24/1984-Levine; Price, Giacomini, Nucci, Jones, Fissore, Giaiotti (ooh! Leontyne Price! I thought she had been erased from history)

12:00 PM Puccini: Tosca
4/16/1994-Badea; Guleghina, Pavarotti, Morris

3:00 PM Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro
2/9/2002-Runnicles; Furlanetto, Uecker, Isokoski, Jepson, Mattei,Plishka (heard this last night)

6:00 PM Massenet: Thaïs
1/28/1978-Pritchard; Sills, Gibbs, Milnes, Morris (heard it last week, I think...)

9:00 PM Rossini: L'Assedio di Corinto
4/19/1975-Schippers; Sills, Verrett, Theyard, Díaz

Does anyone else notice the time bias here? And why are we repeating broadcasts? They are (generally) good recordings (that '37 Lammermoor is phenomenal. Pinza sounds like God himself), but come on! We have three quarters of a century to choose from! How many Nozzes are there in the Met library? Why repeat Furlinetto's?  Can we hear Siepi's, just once PLEEEEEEASE?

And kind of frighteningly: why wouldn't the Met put it's best foot forward on these broadcasts, by picking out the crown jewels of its' library?  What rationale could lead to the selection of anything but the best of the best recordings?

I have a few theories:

Saving the best for purchase - the Met is still (AFAIK) selling their archives as well. Maybe they're saving those eargasmic jewels for sale.

Audio quality - Bryn's theory is that they may be avoiding earlier recordings because the audio quality isn't as good... and the assumption is that a digital radio subscriber is interested in only the best audio quality.

Not everything is digitized yet - It also may just be because not all of the archives are digitized yet. They have literally thousands of recordings, and the press releases have all mentioned that this is an ongoing project. Maybe they're doing them in reverse chronological order. But then, where did that Lucia di Lammermoor come from?

Embarrassment - I hate that this is even a possibility in my mind. That they avoid the incredible works because they put the modern Live broadcasts into such a poor light. That if I had just heard Moffo/Bonisolli/Bechi sing Traviata, it would cast last night's live Hong/Kim/Taylor Traviata (I think that was the cast) into sharp relief. Not that last night's broadcast was dreadful or anything, but let's be serious: beside Moffo or Callas, one couldn't help but notice the difference.

What's your opinion? Why does the sampling seem so biased against the Met's best era and best recordings?

UPDATE: I forgot one other possible explanation:

Marketing: Emphasis is placed on singers still working and singing with the Met... for a bit of artificial prestige for the singers, and therefore for the house.  People arrive at the Met recognizing singers' names, and having been told at least once before that singer X is a 'great singer' by virtue of their radio presence - whatever the truth of the matter. 

This would explain the steady diet of Domingo: I've never heard so much of that tenor as I have in the last few weeks.  He's on at least one broadcast a day, usually more.  Don't get me wrong: he's one of the Great Tenors of the Century, no doubt about it, but maybe they're plugging him over Corelli because one of them is still singing at the Met. 

It's also worth noting that I have yet to hear a peep out of Pavarotti, despite his career that spans the emphasized period on Sirius.  This would support the Marketing theory, since Pav doesn't sing much at the Met anymore.

 I welcome your thoughts on the matter.  Remember, if you're concerned about criticizing the Met or singers who are still working, you can always post anonymously.

As regular readers (a fine, well read, muscular and good looking group) know, I didn't get to see the first video broadcast from the Met.  Die Zauberflöte, shortened, in English, and kid-friendly.  Zauberflöte (or as the met broadcast announcers say it, Zauberflrte) is one of my favorite operas, and it took me considerable thought to decide whether I liked the idea.

I got to hear a broadcast of this version (on my new Sirius radio!) yesterday, and I loved it.  I loved it so much, that I'm going to open a can of worms and say that I think we should do more opera in English translation.  Excuse me while I duck for cover.

 ...

The trouble with opera in the original language in America is, no one speaks the language.  Supertitles distract from the dramatic action and pull the audience out of the moment - not to mention that in comedy, the laughs come at all the wrong times.  If the audience ignores the supertitles, they are left listening to pretty gibberish.  An English translation allows performers to engage the audience, and keep them connected to the drama throughout the piece.

Unfortunately, the good name of English Translations is too often soiled by poor translations.  I hate to say it, but most of the Schirmer translations are just terrible.  Ruth and Thomas Martin translated their operas decades ago, and the syntax that was awkward then is even worse today.  In the old days (cue sepia video), theatres commissioned their own translations - some were good and some were bad.  Now we use the conseritavissimo, older-than-the-sun translations almost exclusively, and shock of shocks! Translated music sucks!  So now we go to the original language, and try to use the technology of supertitles (or seatback-titles) to make up for it.  Why is anyone surprised that this experience has a hard time provoking visceral emotional reactions from most audience members through anything but the raw power of the music?  The drama is never compelling anymore in opera, and I think that English translations would help a great deal.

 This recent Met Zauberflöte is the first example I've heard of an in-house translation, and it was wonderful.  Papageno was genuinely funny, and the Queen of the Night actually frightening!  Even Monostatos got laughs for his spoken comedy, not just his slapsticking!  This is unheard of in the the 'Flute.

I should mention: I would prefer to watch much of my opera in the original language.  But then, I speak Italian and French fluently.  99% of the audience is not in that position.

Quite apart from the audience's enjoyment, the other great benefit we'd reap from more emphasis on translated repertoire is a competitive advantage for works written in English.  The truth is, a translation can never be as good as the original.  So what do we see in countries that do a lot of translating?  In Germany, there is a distinct emphasis on opera written in German.  In Italy, they surprise by doing more works written in Italian.  "but they have a canon of works!" I hear you cry.  So do we.

English opera has been written for long enough now that we can start relying on our own language much more.  Gilbert and Sullivan aside (though I would love to see more of that), where is all the Britten?  The Barber, the Moore, the Menotti, the Strauss for crying out loud!  There is plenty of great English opera out there that gets ignored, or under-played.  Billy Budd and Peter Grimes are extraordinary pieces, but so is Gloriana.  The Devil and Daniel Webster and the Old Maid and the Thief seem to have disappeared completely... and who has actually seen the Tender Land or the Crucible?  I could go on for ages.  Apparently the Ballad of Baby Doe is still the second most performed English opera in the country, and when was the last time your local house played that?

If watching opera in English means more of this sort of repertoire, I'm all for it.  If it means a deeper understanding and connection to the foreign operatic canon for monolingual audiences, I'm all for it.  If all that comes at the price of the occasional crappy translation, I'll consider it a good deal.

PS: if you're interested in more American opera, check out usopera.com - a wonderful resource.  Write your local opera company and ask for some of these works by name.

 PPS - the most performed English Opera (if you were wondering) is Amahl and the Night Visitors, by Menotti.  It gets the added boost of being a Christmas opera, so there are thousands of churches that put it on every year.

Metropolitan Opera Live Broadcast tickets are on sale.  Go find your closest theatre, and then book travel arrangements.  Wait, what??  Gelb, I think we are learning that you don’t pay great attention to the details of execution.  Like putting broadcast theatres anywhere near your target audience.

First, let me define the target market as I see it: young, student aged opera nuts and musicians, who live too far from Houston/Miami/Chicago/San Francisco/New York to see a top notch show there.  I say student-aged because the theater venue is a play to a more comfortable venue for this age group.  Also because the ticket price seems to aim at a smaller income.  As a convenient shorthand, we’ll look at the biggest music schools in the country.  We’ll also look at where I live, because of the large classical music audience in Cincinnati – and because I have to bitch.

Ask me where we have to go to see the Magic Flute.  Is it playing in Cincinnati, home to the most recorded Symphony in the country, a top-notch regional Opera House, and one of the top music conservatories (and associated audiences)?  Is it Dayton, home to another solid regional house with enough donor money (and associated audience) that they just rebuilt their theater from the ground up?

Nope.  We have to go to Beaver Creek, Ohio.  Beaver Creek, that teeming metropolis, where the occasional opera fan might get lost on his way somewhere significant.  “Oh, THAT Beaver Creek!” you say.

Indiana University – One of the largest music schools in the country, with umpteen gazillion opera singers, along with corresponding donors and audience: that audience will drive 80 miles to Louisville, KY (an hour and a half)

Florida State University – Every bit as big as IU, with more undergrads than you can shake a stick at.  Conveniently located in a city.  Nearest participating theater: 162 miles away (two and a half hour drive)

I would have listed more, but the Fathom Events web server seems to be having trouble.  Will somebody please buy them a web server?  The  toaster they’re using is struggling under the load of a thousand opera fans saying “you want me to drive WHERE?”

Gelb, sometimes I wonder if you were hired to sabotage great ideas so they would never be used again.  “go on Letterman?  No way! You remember what happened LAST TIME…”  These are great ideas, but it would be better not to do them at all than to do them so poorly and ruin the idea for future years.  I'm sure that opera NUTS will make those hour drives to see the first broadcast.  Maybe the second, too.  But if you think that this is how to build a regular theater audience, you need some better advice.

An intrepid commenter left me a link for the MetBlog today... apparently they're blogging their rehearsal process for The First Emperor, the newly commissioned work by Tan Dun. Is this Gelb at work? Or something going on under his radar? In any case, I like it.

But wait till you see the spring project I'm working on. Holy crap. It'll combine so many of my favorite things - Bryn, Opera, the Internet, streaming, blogging... it's gonna be sooo badass it' hard to describe. So I won't describe it - YET. You're just gonna have to wait.