Major cultural institutions are not noted for their agility with change. Board structures, subscribers’ tastes, administrative ballast, and the sheer tyranny of favored practices cause many symphonies, museums, and theatre companies to lumber on like corporate giants rather than the vital entities they need to be, ready to turn on a dime to freshen artistic vision. Large opera companies tend to be even more unwieldy, given the multi-year planning process needed to plot future seasons, engage singers, assemble production teams, and secure funding support.
As recently as three years ago, New York’s two major opera companies showed these very behavior patterns. Taking the helm at the Metropolitan Opera in 1990, Joseph Volpe was the model of consistency. With his career-long grasp of the Met’s internal operations, with his skilled hand at managing finances and union negotiations, and — most especially — with the extraordinary and tireless James Levine as his artistic director, Volpe kept the ship on its steady and, yes, rather predictable course.
Across the plaza at New York Theater, the well-respected Paul Kellogg took over the spunky New York City Opera six years after Volpe’s appointment. With a shrewd agility mastered at Glimmerglass Opera he waged Avis-like insurrections against the Hertz monolith of the Met. In true City Opera fashion, Kellog honored the populist spirit of this institution, with a smart portfolio of American operas, neglected gems of the baroque era (almost single-handedly powering the Handel revival), and a spectrum of boutique operas that the Met would never touch.
As Volpe neared retirement, the Board of the Met moved quickly — and surprisingly — to name music industry veteran Peter Gelb as his successor, with an October 2004 announcement that raised more than a few eyebrows across the opera world. And as Kellogg nears the end of his roller-coaster decade at City Opera, the bombshell appointment last February 28 of Europe’s Über-Intendant Gerard Mortier as Kellogg’s successor, to begin in 2009, almost upstaged the prominence and acclaim being lavished on Gelb’s opening season at the Met. (Read more about the Mortier-City Opera marriage in part two of the article on Thursday.)
A specialist in managing artists’ careers, as an early protégé of Columbia Artists power-broker Ronald Wilford, and a veteran of media production with Sony Classics, Gelb held strong credentials as an entrepreneur and corporate visionary, but with tarnished repute among many classical music insiders for promoting commercial interests over integrity in musical quality. Yo-Yo Ma’s “cross-over” commercial recordings, careerism moves on behalf of Charlotte Church and Vangelis, and the blockbuster production of James Horner’s Titanic soundtrack signaled for many a superficial regard for the intrinsic qualities of the classical tradition. Still, Gelb has paid significant and valued dues with the Met, having overseen a number of its live telecasts and DVD productions, including the acclaimed 1990 Ring Cycle, produced in close, amiable collaboration with both Volpe and Levine.
Given 18 months of creative gestation prior to stepping forward with his inaugural season, Gelb swiftly reconfigured works already planned for 2006-07 (among them the touted Tan Dun commission, The First Emperor) and revisited existing contracts with vocalists and creative teams, so as to arrive at an exciting artistic statement very much his own. Pivotal decisions for stage directors and designers led Gelb to the worlds of Hollywood cinema, Broadway theater, and contemporary dance for three of his most salient productions of the year, with Anthony Minghella (The English Patient), Bartlett Scher (Light in the Piazza), and Mark Morris all scoring major coups with Madame Butterfly, Barber of Seville, and Orpheus and Eurydice. Even the tragically sudden death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson last July, just weeks after Met marketing brochures had trumpeted a new production of Orpheus and Eurydice designed exclusively for her, was weathered; her deeply mourned loss led to the rather oblique and inspired recasting of countertenor David Daniels, who triumphed in the lead. With Gelb’s debut season now a matter of public record, it’s gratifying to look back and marvel at some of the master’s touches, both on a grand scale and in many smaller details of engaging a strategically re-imagined Metropolitan Opera family.
As for the big statements, he threw open the doors of the Met to the greater world, with a shrewd balance of populist flair and marketing savvy. By lifting Minghella’s bold new production of Madame Butterfly from the gala opening night stage to Times Square and Lincoln Center Plaza, through high definition big screen simulcasts, he extended operatic magic to thousands of rapt viewers who would never have penetrated the celebrity throng of Met patrons and dignitaries indoors. As barriers collapsed through the wonder of media screens, a large public groundswell of renewed interest in Puccini’s masterpiece, enacted with splendid theatrical power, brought unprecedented marketplace interest in Mr. Gelb’s Met, with a rush to the box office that soon sold out the run of the production.
In a similarly entrepreneurial stroke, Gelb committed major resources to beaming six of the Met’s strongest productions into neighborhood cinemas throughout the country, placing the likes of Magic Flute, I Puritani and Eugene Onegin in direct marketplace competition with such blockbusters as Shreck, The Queen, and Pirates of the Caribbean. By many reports these HD simulcasts of Saturday matinees are easily holding their own, and in some instances besting the Hollywood competition. Only time will tell whether this venture capital will repay its investor with fresh earned revenue and — even better — new generations of ticket-buyers and contributors.
As entertainment value allies itself with artistic product, critics and public alike are witnessing a freshening of Met performances, with sharper quality in ensemble esprit, dramatic power, and beauty of staging. As the eye of the camera and vastly extended audience engagement become a more compelling dynamic in opera production, the edgy excitement of live performances in the halls of the Met benefits as well. Some, however, harbor concerns that the “look” of an artist may soon outweigh musicality and vocal heft, as was suggested, with some sense of intramural discomfort, in an April 12 New York Times interview with Ruth Ann Swenson, suggesting that a “trimming” of future engagements for her at the Met may be guided more by criteria of the eye than of the ear.
The invasion of opera into the neighborhood Cineplex prompted New Yorker music critic Alex Ross to journey earlier this spring to Moosic, Pennsylvania, a working class suburb of Scranton, where he reported full houses at two theaters at the Cinemark 20 for the four-hour simulcast of the Met’s new production of Puccini’s Il Trittico. A curious glance into the adjacent theater revealed a less than half-full audience for its Hollywood competiton, Disturbia. In addition to the sheer excellence of the production values of the broadcast, rich in high definition detail and skilled editing of camera angles and scenic design, Ross also praised the smart intermission features, which literally invited the viewing audience into the heart of the production, with backstage tours, interviews with designers and singers, and a cordial, ingratiating immersion into the world of opera. All in remote Pennsylvania!
Many of these same touches have reinvigorated one of the most stolid warhorses of Metropolitan Opera seasons past — the venerable and, yes, a bit threadbare, Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts. During Volpe’s final seasons this institution almost collapsed, as Texaco ended its decades-old sponsorship. Its financial recovery is underway, with new support from Toll Brothers. Better still, the freshness of the product took a giant step forward with the charming Margaret Juntwait’s arrival as on-air host, and with smart makeovers of intermission features and the amiable banter of opera quiz contestants. The quality of the broadcasts has soared in Gelb’s first year, with Ms. Juntwait now joined by the wise and witty raconteur Ira Siff as co-host. Their on-air chemistry is positively infectious.
The thousands of listeners for whom these broadcasts are absolute habits of life (this writer included) are now being treated to a font of well-produced intermission features, ranging from interviews and plot summaries to vivid sneak previews of upcoming productions. Taking a page from the ESPN playbook, the Met broadcast team now snags singers and conductors as they leave the “playing stage” for “in the moment” interviews and commentaries, as they head to the dressing room. As deeply immersed as they have been in their stage identity, the mask of makeup and costuming is suddenly dissolved, and the humanity of the artists is allowed to flourish in well-produced audio sidebars. The early April feature with the designer and production manager of the much-anticipated premiere of Puccini’s Il Trittico had listeners salivating for the visual excitement soon to unfold as this lavish visual spectacle, with daunting production challenges, was brought to the Met’s stage weeks later. All this through the medium of radio, reaching the worlds of listeners throughout the land, privileging listeners with insight and excitement of entering a world rarely open to the casual viewer.
As big screen simulcasts continue to grow Met audiences in our increasingly visual world, the abiding allure of aural engagement will continue to cast its own spellbinding fascination, triggering worlds of imagination and enthrallment that only the mind’s eye can penetrate.
