P's birthday present to me was tickets to see Berlioz's 'La Danmation de Faust' at the IMAX. It was being staged at the Met Opera Hose in New York and transmitted live to London. The thing that made it extra specially exciting for me, though was that Robert Lepage had staged it. And as I have said before, he is my favourite theatre director.The sound system in the IMAX is amazing and that, coupled with the big screen made me imagine that this would be almost as good as seeing the opera live. I had tried to get tickets for the showing at the Barbican but they had sold out but the IMAX would be much better due to this fantastic sound system.
Lepage has used interactive film as part of the staging. The performers can trigger different pieces of footage to be projected onto the scenery with their movements and voices. So although the actual set is on 4 levels and simply looks like 4 large open cubes, 4 rows high we have footage of people sinking into deep water, a cathedral's stained glass windows, horses galloping and grass blowing in the wind to mention just some. I was so excited to see what he had done.
The show stared off with an introduction to the opera by Susan Graham who sang the part of Marguerite. She was fantastic. Beautiful voice. Then we saw the conductor, James Levine walking to the pit. Everyone actually did refer to him as Maestro! Why do music (as opposed to bus) conductors and mad scientists always have hair like Albert Einstein's? Simon Rattle? I rest my case. Lights down, audience hushed, conductor taps his baton and here we go!
5 Minutes into the opera we knew we were going to be sorely disappointed. Whoever directed the camerawork is one truly amateurish director. The camera zoomed into the singer's faces. It was so close we could see if they had fillings or not. And we could see every tiny bead of sweat on their faces. When the camera wasn't zooming right in and cutting every single other part of the stage out it was panning left, right, up, down! A 4 year old could have done better.
Because we could not see the whole stage we could not see how it worked properly. We missed a lot of the video effects and completely missed the grandeur of so many singers, dancers and acrobats on stage. What a missed opportunity! It must have been phenomonal to see it live on stage and not through someone else's eyes. The camera work gave you the effect of looking at the stage through a telescope.
I loved John Relyea as Mephistopheles. Is it bad to say you loved someone's interpretation of the Devil I wonder? Did like his red outfit. And a special mention for Marcello Giordani who played Faust. Although we started watching the opera at 6pm in London this was actually a matinee performance in New York. Marcello stood in for an ill performer to play the part of Pinkerton in the evening performance of Madame Butterfly.
I do hope the Met manage to sort out the transmission of their operas. Its a brilliant idea and there are several more in this season but based on Saturdays filming and the very negative comments coming from the audience in London not many tickets will be sold here. Robert Lepage was apparently watching a live transmission in Los Angeles on Saturday. I wonder what he made of it?
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