The Metropolitan Opera Live in HD
Words Betty Uy-Regala
Photo courtesy The Metropolitan Opera
July 17, 2024
Subway station scene (Act IV)_from the Met Opera website
In the stead of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City is the Greenbelt 3 Cinemas of Makati City. In place of the ticket price range of US$82 to US$695 per audience member is the PhP100 (for students) to PhP350 price scale per person.
In its ninth season in the Philippines, the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD, or more popularly known as The MET: Live in HD, a Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) special program, showcases opera in an affordable and accessible venue since 2015.
The program replicates the experience of watching an opera firsthand at the Metropolitan Opera House with its high-definition video and Dolby sound as one sits in Cinema 1 together with a fairly good number of audience members composed of a mixed bag of the young and the young at heart. Spotted in the queue to the picture house were theater personalities Rody Vera and Michael Williams.
Igor Golovatenko and Lise Davidsen in La Forza (Karen Almond_Met Opera)
The MET: Live in HD had its broadcast debut on December 30, 2006 with Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The series has from that point forward been shown in cinema houses in the United States and other countries.
In the Philippines, the program featured Giuseppe Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino or The Power of Fate, or its common transliteration of The Force of Destiny, for its fifth offering out of seven in this season. The Italian opera was based on the 1835 Spanish play Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, penned by Angel de Saavedra.
The 189-year-old opera with four acts had a theatrical running time of two hours and 55 minutes (without the two intermissions) on stage, which stretched to four hours in the cinema, as host Nadine Sierra, a soprano, introduced the opera and provided context to the dramatic work. Intermissions unveiled behind-the-scenes interviews backgrounded by a flurry of activities as actors exit the stage and stagehands prepare the next scenes.
Lise Davidsen and Brian Jagde in La Forza (Karen Almond_Met Opera)
The host spoke to cast members Lise Davidsen (Leonora), Brian Jagde (Don Alvaro), Igor Golovatenko (Don Carlo); conductor Maestro Yannik Nézet-Séguin, and clarinetist Anton Rist of the MET Opera Orchestra. The breaks also had roll-ins of director Mariusz Treliński and set designer Boris Kudlička, and chorus master Donald Palumbo.
Treliński, who described himself as a movie director that jumped to opera and remained there, shared: “After the Ukrainian war, after what’s happened very close from us, because we live in Poland – it’s just a few kilometers from us – we see a reality of war, a reality of murdering people, a reality of cruelty.”
He added, “We realize that it’s not opera; it’s something more because we are confronted with pure evil. I can say I have two duties. One duty is to be fair to the composer, but another duty is to be fair with contemporary times.”
Kudlička echoed Treliński in transforming La Forza into a contemporary world.
Lise Davidsen in La Forza (Karen Almond _ Met Opera)
Time and place were deliberately made unclear because he used set elements from the beginning of the 20th century until the late nineties. Projections and the revolve also added to the modernity of the opera.
However, the contemporized production focused more on the visuals and left the second compelling motivation for Don Carlos’ vengeance in the 19th century. His accusation that Don Alvaro violated his sister’s chastity was out of place from a dramatic work that had a hotel, a bar, a car, and an escalator.
For its two other offerings before the program’s ninth season draws its curtains, The MET: Live in HD will feature Giacomo Puccini’s La rondine or The Swallow on August 13, 2024, and Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking on September 3, 2024 at the Greenbelt 3 Cinemas.
