Experience Opera on the big screen

This piece was published in the Pasadena Star-News on January 29, 2008.

​The closest I came to being an opera fan was the 15 years I spent as a regular 
 viewer of As the World Turns, a so-called “soap opera.” The daily daytime dramas are 
 called soap operas, or “soaps” for short, because they are often sponsored by laundry 
 detergent or other household cleansers. The “opera” part comes from the interpersonal 
 storylines, romantic liaisons and breakups, clear cut villains, brave heroes and fair 
 maidens.     
 
New York’s Metropolitan Opera started broadcasting real operas in movie theaters 
throughout the United States starting in their 2006/2007 season. I attended “I Puritani,” 
one of the first productions, last January in Alhambra and was shocked to see the line to 
enter the theater stretching around the block – at 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. 
Who were these people? It turns out they were just like me, curious to see an opera in a 
movie theater, broadcast live from New York. 
 
When my husband and I entered the theater, we heard the orchestra tuning, 3000 miles 
away in the pit of the Met. We had to scramble to find a good seat because the opera 
buffs had come early. After we got settled we watched the people in the audience at the 
theater taking their seats on the screen. Listening to the tuning orchestra and watching 
the audience members taking their seats made us feel as if we were at a live 
performance. The conductor came out and the camera followed him to the pit where he 
lifted his baton and the opera began. 
 
The cameras moved around the stage and gave the theater audience a view of the 
opera that those at the Met could not see. The subtitles provided the English translation
so I could follow the story, but opera dialogue moves very slowly because 
everything is sung, so it forces the viewer to slow down. At first I was annoyed and 
wanted the story to move faster because I am used to quickly changing scenes and 
dialogue on TV and the movies. In opera, you have to stop, look and listen -- to the 
singing, the scenery and the singers in their costumes. It takes a while to slow the pace, 
but once you get there, it is relaxing.
 
At intermission the camera went backstage to the radio booth where Beverly Sills, a 
 former opera star, gave a backstage tour. Sills made opera accessible, like Leonard 
 Bernstein did for classical music. She was very funny when she described the “mad 
 scene” when the female lover thinks she has been deserted by the man she loves and 
 goes nuts. Sills recalled the mad scenes she played during her long career and gave 
 an inside-look-at-baseball for the movie theater audience.
 
Operas are long and they often have two intermissions. That is another part of 
 adjusting to opera that is worth the effort. There are few things we sit still for these days. 
 Staying put for the opera gives you a chance to be transported to another world where 
 emotions are strong and storylines are spare but the singing is glorious and at some 
point you dissolve into it. But it takes time and patience.
 
Since my first experience, I have returned to the theater in Alhambra and am now 
savoring my newly acquired taste in opera. We went to see “Hansel and Gretel” on New 
Year’s Day. It was a very dark rendering of the Grimm fairy tale and the two singers, 
Alice Coote and Christine Schafer, had me convinced they were two little kids. In this 
opera there were much more elaborate costumes and sets, and the dream sequence
in the forest was magical. 
 
Hansel and Gretel slept at the front of the stage while at least a dozen characters 
walked in, with giant heads, like the bubble heads of sports figures. A table rolled in and 
 the characters brought in cakes, pastries and other confections – some were real and 
 some were props, as we found out during intermission from the Stage Manager when 
 we were taken back stage by Renee Fleming. The music played in the background and 
 we had a visual feast as the stage was transported into an elegant dining room. 
 
Opera in movie theaters provides an opportunity for people who want to check out 
opera to see and hear the best the art form has to offer. The Met is going to present its 
 high-definition simulcasts on 300 – 400 movie screens this season, a nearly three-fold 
 increase from last season. An art form that originated in 1597 has relevance today and 
can be seen by anyone who buys a ticket. For more information go
to www.metropera.org/hdive ​or call 1-800-Met-Opera.