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How the Met Opera is throwing a gala concert with smartphones |
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An image provided by the Metropolitan Opera shows a screen capture of members of the Mets orchestra and chorus, which will perform at the At-Home Gala on Saturday. Closed by the coronavirus, the company is streaming its biggest stars, performing live across nine time zones. Metropolitan Opera via The New York Times.
by Joshua Barone
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NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Is this enough light? asked baritone Peter Mattei.
He was in the living room of his home outside Stockholm, speaking over Skype with a small group of Metropolitan Opera staff members who were giving him directions to prepare for the companys At-Home Gala on Saturday a worldwide relay of live streamed performances that, in contrast to operas usual grandeur, will be filmed using only household devices.
In Matteis case, it will mean transmitting a Mozart aria with a smartphone and a cellular data plan, from a house that of course wasnt meant to be a studio. So he needed help from the Met to at least establish his shot. He moved from room to room while his dog, a labradoodle named Yoda, occasionally sneaked into the frame. But nothing was quite working.
Through the windows, Peter Gelb, the Mets general manager at home in New York could see a waterfront and serene Scandinavian twilight. He had an idea: Could you try singing outside?
But Mattei laughed off the suggestion. I will feel embarrassed, he said. Everyone will think Im crazy, that I have no job and now I start to sing outside.
It was a bit of gallows humor at a catastrophic moment in opera. The Met halted performances March 12 in response to the coronavirus pandemic and eventually canceled the remainder of its season, estimating losses of up to $60 million. The industry, a global ecosystem largely made up of freelance artists, is now facing widespread unemployment with no end in sight.
With the Met closed to the public, its administrative staff has been busy with an emergency fundraising campaign and, for the past two weeks, the At-Home Gala. The event, which will be streamed on metopera.org at 1 p.m. Eastern on Saturday and remain available until Sunday evening, has an only-in-opera level of aspiration and difficulty: a roster of more than 40 of the companys starriest singers, plus members of the orchestra and chorus, performing live across nine time zones. Among them are Lisette Oropesa, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Anna Netrebko, in Vienna; and Piotr Beczala, in what he described to Gelb as a village at the end of the earth in Poland.
The Met is no stranger to marathon galas, yet there hasnt been anything like this in its history.
Gelb who will be hosting from New York along with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Mets music director, who is in Montreal said that the idea came about because I am determined to keep the Met in the consciousness of the broader public, and I am determined to use any possible means to do that.
Since the opera house went dark, it has posted a free stream from its vast Met Opera On Demand library every night. (Gelb said that in the past five weeks, the number of paid subscribers to that on-demand service has doubled, to 30,000.) Each stream is accompanied by a Donate Now button; the At-Home Gala will have one, too, though Gelb was quick to emphasize that this is not a PBS telethon.
I think people recognize what the Met is trying to do, he said, and they express that without our having to hit them over the head. The gala, he added, is instead a way for people feel a little like theyre back in the theater.
Theres no substitute for performing, he said. And yet this gives us something meaningful to do.
Within 48 hours of conceiving the gala in early April, Gelb had enlisted Nézet-Séguin and dozens of participants, asking little more than that they sing an aria and dress, as he told tenor Jonas Kaufmann, somewhere between sauna and formal attire. Things came together so quickly that a news release was sent out before the performers had done their screen and sound tests.
Star soprano Renée Fleming, who has been sheltering in place at her home in Virginia, recalled that when she heard from Gelb, she told him, Well, nobody can say theyre busy. Joking aside, she said, she agreed to take part because she wants to help the Met and other organizations maintain a connection to their audience. (She also has some experience with homespun performance, having recently made a video of Schuberts Ave Maria remotely with pianist Evgeny Kissin.)
All the artists participating in the gala are donating their time. Its totally a labor of love and, I think, an opportunity for people to do something, Gelb said.
With seven-figure financial support from philanthropist Mercedes T. Bass and Rolex, the Met has pulled together an enterprise for less than $100,000 that blends the lo-fi quality of Skype and the broadcasting might of the companys Live in HD series. Some parts will be prerecorded: Nézet-Séguin, not using a click track but, rather, a video of his conducting which, he said, will be more human and warm has already led members of the Met Orchestra in excerpts from Lohengrin and Cavalleria Rusticana, and choristers in Va, pensiero, a crowd favorite from Verdis Nabucco.
The live portions will be powered by four channels, two of which will be needed for the streams technical back end. That leaves one for whoever is on camera and one for the singer on deck so none of the performers will be seen or heard until shortly before their moment in the spotlight.
Gelbs week, then, has been filled with tests: half-hour Skype calls with singers and technicians including Gary Halvorson, the longtime Live in HD director. Through trial and error, they have sought sweet spots of Wi-Fi signals and sound balance; Mattei eventually found his light not in his living room or in his boathouse, but in a nearby studio where he learned the title role of Wozzeck for the Met.
Even well-prepared singers have run into difficulties. Soprano Angel Blue who will perform from her basement in New Jersey, in front of a framed photo of the Mets old theater had marking tape and good lighting. But her phones mic was unreliable, producing a tinny sound, so she was asked to change devices and return for another test.
Ill be here, she said. I have nowhere to go.
Her second sound check was a success, but technology has been less cooperative for other singers. Names have been added to the gala roster but also subtracted because of insufficient internet access or, in the case of Christine Goerke, the inability of an iPad to handle the enormous sound of a Wagnerian soprano.
Some are singing for the first time in weeks; Fleming joked that shes grateful the gala has made her start practicing again. Ive never had to worry about being disciplined, she said, because Ive always had something to work on.
Come Saturday, though, vocal troubles are the least of the worries. If something does go wrong, such as a signal cutting out, the Met has assembled some buffer videos to pass time until the next singer is ready to get on camera.
They wouldnt be needed if the performances were prerecorded, as they have been in pop events like the recent special One World: Together at Home. But Gelb preferred something closer to the danger and thrill of the Mets stage, where you never know whether a singer will overshoot a high note or land it with sublime precision.
Thats what makes opera so special, Gelb said. Were living on the edge.
© 2020 The New York Times Company
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