Time for the latest installment in the occasional mash-up of SNLC with the occasional opera series begun by Demi Moaned, since poached by self. With that said, here's today's variation on the standard start-up question for this series:
Anyone see the Metropolitan Opera HD-cast of La Bohème today?
If you did, good for you, and you have an advantage over me, because I have not seen it. (I've seen La Bohème live, just not this version.) Thus I'm obviously not able to comment on this particular performance, of course (EDIT: as a result, I missed the last minute substitution of Kristīne Opolais as Mimi; thanks to NinthElegy for the heads-up). So why did 3CM the loser go ahead with this diary anyway? Because, it turns out, there are other issues, perhaps more meta, that relate to the HD-casts more generally, where this particular one can be a starting point, even without me seeing it. More below the flip....
First, to get everyone up to speed, you can read the summary of the plot here. My own philosophy toward La Bohème is that if you've never seen an opera, La Bohème is actually the perfect first opera to try out. The reasons are thus:
(1) The plot is very clear and straightforward, namely:
Act I = Boy (Rodolfo) meets girl (Mimi) on Christmas Eve in a poor Paris garret.
Act II = Everyone goes out on the town that night. Other couple (Marcello, Musetta) come into the story.
Act III = A few months later; boy(s) and girl(s) have various degrees of falling out.
Act IV = A few months later still; some reconciliation occurs between boy(s) and girl(s), but since this is opera.....well, let's leave it at that.
(2) The music is simply wonderful, and grabs you from the start, without a dull moment. In fact, the music is so compelling that you don't really think about the huge plot gaps between Acts II and II, and between Acts III and IV, plot gaps big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through.
(3) The time construction is perfect, 4 acts of just about 30 minutes each.
Little wonder that you read at the Met's page where you can buy tickets for the opera:
"Puccini’s moving story of young love is the most performed opera in Met history — and with good reason. "
If you go to
this page,
La Bohème shows up as having been performed 1245 times up to 12/8/2011 (which makes the number of out date - memo to the Met, get with the updating).
Moreover, the current production is the famous, and extremely long-lived (think decades, back to 1981) Franco Zeffirelli production. Those of a certain generation may remember Zeffirelli as a notable film director, such as of the 1968 Romeo and Juliet, the 1967 The Taming of the Shrew with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the 1970's TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. Zeffirelli's directing philosophy in opera can be summarized thus: ultra-hyper detailed staging, historically in period, no "radical" or "modern" concepts. You can get a sense from this video on YT (not from the Met's production), from some years earlier (no subtitles, though):
In other words, this is the kind of production that hyper-traditionalist old-school audiences love, and which opera snobs dismiss as "necessary to bring in the tourists". Because this is such a standard production of such a standard repertoire work, the cynics state that this is an opera where the Met management can toss in just about anyone into the cast or any conductor into the pit, because the production is the thing, not so much the singers, as the NYT review of the latest revival indicates, particularly in Act II:
"The cast is dwarfed by the swirling chaos onstage in a scene described in the libretto as a 'vast and motley crowd of citizens, soldiers, serving girls, children, students, seamstresses, gendarmes, etc.'
There is a 'Where's Waldo” element to watching the main singers blend into the milling throngs, their voices competing with the myriad activities unfolding around them. But the lavish sets (which require long intermissions to assemble) and vast numbers of extras onstage invariably elicit applause and appreciative gasps when the curtain rises, as occurred when the production returned to the house on Wednesday evening with the second cast of the season."
In a
review from earlier this season of this same production, but a different cast, Anthony Tommasini brings up the same point:
"For more than 30 years, the known quantity of attending Puccini's La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera has been Franco Zeffirelli's colorful, minutely detailed and popular production. Audiences erupted with amazed ahs and applause when the curtain first went up in 1981 on the Act II scene depicting the Café Momus and the milling crowds (with some 240 choristers and extras) on a hilly street in the Latin Quarter of Paris. The audience did so again when La Bohème returned to the Met stage on Tuesday night."
Getting back to the more-or-less present day (though still in the same season), as Vivien Schweitzer noted in her review, 3 of the singers were making their Metropolitan Opera debuts, Anita Hartig (Mimi), Jennifer Rowley (Musetta) and Nicolas Testé as Colline. This sort of reinforces the point that you can test out new talent in a "safe" production like this. Likewise, the conductor, Stefano Ranzani, is a name I honestly do not know.
The tenor, Vittorio Grigolo (late of the "popera" "boy band" Il Divo), was making a repeat go-around in this production as Rodolfo. His first was back in 2010, reviewed here. In fact, a look at Tommasini's review of that earlier revival indicates that back in October 2010, there were also 3 roles debuts then, as well as a conductor debut. You get the idea.
Keeping with the idea of repeats, this is actually the second HD-cast of the Zeffirelli production of La Bohème. The first HD-cast had Angela Gheorghiu as Mimi and Ramon Vargas as Rodolfo, back in April 2008. In other words, in the history of the Met's HD opera-casts, this is the second HD-cast for the same opera, in the same production, exactly 6 years later, albeit with a different cast and conductor. The plan has been to have each of the HD-casts edited and issued on DVD, as well as broadcast on PBS in due course (hence the particular nature of the poll questions).
In turn, this isn't the only opera to get the repeat Met HD-treatment of late. This season, for example, other operas that have been HD'ed in past seasons, which got the repeat treatment this season, were Eugene Onegin and Tosca, with La Cenerentola to come next month. Next season, there are 10 HD-casts scheduled. 3 of them are of operas that have been HD'ed once already, Macbeth, Carmen, and The Tales of Hoffmann. The other 7 are new to the HD-series, to be fair to the Met.
But the question is begged on the repeats: why repeat operas? The question becomes more pertinent when one thinks of missed or blown opportunities for the HD-casts. For example, 2 seasons back, Aida got a second HD-cast in the history of the Met's HD-runs. Totally shut out was the final revival of Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, in a 1977 production that was being retired after the end of the 2012-2013 season. It only received 3 performances that season. All the reviews, even the king of critical opera snark Martin Bernheimer, were rapturously positive.
Yet the Met chose not to HD Dialogues of the Carmelites. Why?
No, Dialogues of the Carmelites isn't as famous as Aida, but at least it wouldn't have been the same old, same old. Plus, it would have been a chance to capture for posterity a sense of that John Dexter production, sung for the first time at the Met in the original French, as all the previous Met performances of Dialogues of the Carmelites were performed in English translation. (BTW, that's all OK, as Poulenc himself wanted his opera sung in the local language of the audience.) That was literally a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the Met. They blew that one big time.
This makes one wonder about the long-term future of the HD-series, at least in terms of repertoire. (Lots of other issues to discuss, but let's just focus on this one here.) In 3CM's ultra-loser pie in the sky vision, ideally the Met should not repeat operas that they're already shown in HD once. The operas that should be HD'ed should always be new to HD, again ideally. The compromise down from that would be a new production of an opera that they've HD'ed already. But given that opera productions, if they're any good, would last for years, that should space out repeats accordingly. But evidently in Peter Gelb's current vision of Met Opera-world, apparently not totally.
I realize that digression is getting way off the original topic of today's HD-cast of La Bohème. So this is where I need your help, for anyone who's actually seen it. I'll be quite happy to see comments from opera-moviegoers to say how it went. Or you can chat about La boheme, Puccini, or opera generally. Or you can observe the standard SNLC protocol, or any combination of the above. Let it not be said that 3CM never exercised some degree of flexibility with regard to posts on DK :) .