Well, not really Live, since Oct 12 NYC performance played a weeklong morning run at theatre from Nov 20, but still: same show, with subtitles, watched all around the world. Imagine: i could compare notes with my Mom in Miami--a month later!
Actually, she told me it was gory and cacaphonoous. I found it the opposite: the complex multi-layered singing/acting/dancing/musical swirl of live opera was broken into constituent elements by the all-powerful camera. "Live" is simulated--a backstage knock and tracking shot through the backstage area to the stage preparations behind the curtain--but then the show begins and we have an other-world view. This is not a single ideal spectator's $300 box-seat, or even an orchestra seat. Instead, a series of pans, dolly-shots, close-ups of singers, and above- and below- shots of the scenes are edited into a whole. It is a tapestry of carefully considered and controlled shots that effectively tell the story--but is it the story of Salome, or the director's, or the film director's? Ultimately the latters.
What is it about a performance which attracts such passion? Surely it's the energy of voices and instruments, coupled with scenic pleasures of sets, costumes, and given dynamic potency by the acting. Yet despite the pretty stage pictures, the expressionist set by Santo Loquasto--a bloodred wall, wavelets and sand, a rusty well-elevator to the dungeon, a glass platter of party-going hedonists--we were never allowed to enjoy the sumptuous feast for the eyes. Instead we watched Salome in foreground close-up, Johannen tied to well-wrack behind her. He gestures, and we see his face and upper torso but his hands are cut off; she staggers drunkenly on stage, yet we see only the upper body, not the feet that sway. Two-shot framing of Herod and Salome, the Queen and the King, Salome and Johannes or the loving soldier are the preferred tv-simulating attempt at dramatic storytelling.
But surely the pleasure of opera, theatre, or even concerts LIVE is being able to zoom, frame, and edit oneself: from orchestra to singers, to set to minor players. We frame, or wander, then are brought into sharp focus in a moment that is exponentially potent precisely because it is a newfound detail. To be led by the eyeballs and forced to watch an edited, limited pov is to superimpose an interpretation even in the act of expression. Opera is not a movie, and a movie should document inconspiciously.
Granted, the robot-cameras capture some startling moments: shots from below or above, bared bosoms and details of properties and eyes flashing that undoubtedly would be missed by the untrained or even poorly-sighted observer. But when the girlfriend of the suicidal soldier picks up his fez and knife, wipes the blade, and heads towards Salome, is the film director not creating an unnecessary and unindicated subtext: she is just heading offstage in fact, while Salome, rebuffed by johannen is whirling in the emotional cloud that is expressed in swirling noise of orchestra.
And the orchestra: where is it? Is it a union thing, or a director's whim: there is not a single shot, until the curtain, of the orchestra. Again: the joy of a live concert is seeing the violin bows in full throttle, an army of wings, and the flash of the trombone and crash of the cymbals. Even if they're in the pit, they are visible--to the actors on stage, at least via video, to the spectator sin all but the closest seats--yet we don't have a sense that this great music is coming from anywhere but the movie speakers--in my case, a thin, loud sound with no breadth or depth. Would a better studio recording and headphones provide better sound--yes. Would a nonlive staged-for-camera document be more thrilling? Doubtful, although perhaps more "authentic" to the single spectator's experience.
My vision for Met Live for the future is: each spectator a director, at the controls of a vast potential of angles, movements, and even speeds. We can then sit at home, behind our pilot controls, guiding the performance as a conductor his orchestra, or rather a tv producer his live broadcast. Sony's eye-sensitive focusing equipment apparently can already do this to some extent--focus the lens on the object the viewer is seeing--the cat BEHIND the wall, rather than the wall itself--so why not expand this to allow for the zooms and pans and tilts and picture-in-picture that each audience employs as they filter the performance.
Oh: it was fun to see the pre- and post- kisses and air-kisses (makeup and beards), and the on-stage ones of the partygoers. Ultimately the cameras are always on, and the backstage becomes another front-stage, as Goffman noted decades ago, a false backstage that proves the "authenticity" of the live event.
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