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thestar.com, Mar 08 2013 |
By: William Littler |
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Metropolitan Opera expands audience with live telecasts
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Movie theatres around the world screen high-definition productions
from New York. |
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NEW YORK—“Who wants an ear?” quipped Jonas Kaufmann, standing in a
dressing gown at a table backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House,
gleefully slicing up a giant pink gummy bear.
“I killed it,” the
superstar German tenor grinned to a group of giggling sopranos, waiting to
go on as flower maidens in The Met’s Live in HD telecast of Wagner’s
Parsifal.
As the flower maidens began consuming bits of murdered
gummy bear, the Dutch soprano Eva-Marie Westbroek eased her way past the
table with a thumb in the air, on her way to an intermission interview about
The Met’s forthcoming March 16 HD telecast of Zandonai’s Francesca da
Rimini: “Jonas, you’re sounding awesome, man.”
Kaufmann smiled,
retreating to his dressing room to prepare his resistance to the amorous
advances of the flower maidens about to confront him in Act II in Klingsor’s
Magic Garden.
The garden, designed by Michael Levine, looked
like none I had seen before in productions of Parsifal, with huge craggy
cliffs flanking rows of — not flowers but shiny spears. It was part of a
stunning new production by his fellow Canadian François Girard of Wagner’s
valedictory opera, being beamed to 64 countries live that very afternoon.
Co-produced by the Opera de Lyon and Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company,
it owes its existence to another production of Parsifal witnessed in Zurich
several years ago by Met general manager Peter Gelb.
“It was
the first time Jonas had sung the (title) role,” Gelb remarked after the
performance, in his spacious office. “He wasn’t quite the star he is today
and I told him I’d do a new production in five years if he would come to New
York and sing it.
“I had known and admired François Girard
for years, back when he was working with Rhombus Media and directing Thirty
Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and The Red Violin and I have been a great
admirer of Michael Levine as well, so I knew they would make a great
production team for us.
“But I also knew that François had limited
operatic experience and hadn’t yet worked at The Met, and Parsifal is a
monumental project, so I looked for an opportunity for him to work on it at
another house before bringing it here. That is where the Opera de Lyon came
in.”
And the Canadian Opera Company? “Alexander Neef (the company’s
general director) and I speak to each other all the time and it seemed like
a good opportunity for all of us.”
“I’m getting on so well with
Alexander but we still don’t know when we’ll do it (Parsifal) in Toronto,”
François Girard volunteered during intermission backstage, rubbing a thumb
and index finger together. “The dates keep changing. It’s a matter of money
(the Gramma Fisher Foundation provided much of the money at The Met, with
major funding coming also from Rolex).”
The money certainly showed on
stage, as viewers in 1,900 movie theatres around the world last Saturday
could testify, the garden scene alone flooding the stage with 1,600 gallons
of artificial blood (a blood motif threaded through the entire production).
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