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, o
an occasional document of theatrical life in Kyoto and the virtual world at the beginning of the 21st century