Broadcasters

There's been a nasty thread on a list- serv about the hosts of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. It got me thinking. Here are some excerpts of my response:

Yes I'm sure everything is scripted. Scripted with the admonition to "sound spontaneous and friendly". 

On a live broadcast I never, ever use a script. If I don't know the material and don't know how to communicate with an audience, I shouldn't be there. That said, I do always write a script and have it handy. We are all human and mental blank outs happen. These shouldn't be at the expense of the listeners.

It is very difficult to find the balance between friendly and informative. I think you are born with this ability. I don't mind telling you I have it. I am not a good script reader but I'm fine talking to the audience about what they are going to hear...briefly and with a touch of humor.

Ms. Juntwait and Mr Siff were hired because they approach this balance. The Met has resolutely moved from the opera -reverence to opera as entertainment. This is not a bad thing. Broadcast media has been around nearly 100 years...it has made everything available and made the previously formal...informal. 

It's been said that the old Metropolitan Opera was a carpenter's theater. The "new" Metropolitan Opera is an electrician's theater. And the  current Metropolitan Opera is a media theater. It's directorate comes from the media, not from opera management. It's marketing and broadcast producer staffs seem to have "new younger cooler audience" audience mandate. Stage directors and designers come from the theater. Robert Lepage's production of The Ring Cycle was nothing like what's ever been seen at the Met. Many people hated it, and the box office reportedly suffered. I wish there was one certain formula to attract this elusive new core audience. There isn't. But the Met is being re-branded as a cool/downtown kind of destination. Sometimes that doesn't translate into quality. The stories and the music are perfect starting points in selling-and they are often neglected.

One thing you can't fake on air is a genuine  love for the material. Ira Siff clearly loves opera and knows a great deal about it. Margaret Juntwait also loves opera and both retain a sense of wonder that is a great way of involving and audience.

I find the current tone of the Met broadcast hosts to be informative and fun. That's my opinion. I find the quiz an absolute disaster. I made one "gong show" reference too many and that's why I'm no longer there. Sour grapes, whatever. 

Alberta Masiello has been invoked. She was a brilliant and very kind woman who did not suffer fools...at all. She'd have no patience with today's broadcasts, but I'm convinced a Masiello hosted Met broadcast series would have a huge audience...and bodies for miles.

The word is Ms Juntwait has battled serious illness for years. That she's does so well is a tribute to her guts and professionalism. Don't blame her or Ira Siff if you dislike the broadcast hosts. They are doing as they are told. Sigh.

Greetings to all. 

PS Edward Downes used to write scripts for Milton Cross. Cross was once asked how much he knew about opera, and he replied, "Not a god damned thing!"

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Peter Gelb for a Day

  
I've never met Peter Gelb. My name will mean nothing to him.
Peter Gelb is the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera.
He's responsible for a half billion dollar company which for many reasons must maintain its status as the world's finest.

His job is to put together a top quality product for about 250 performances a year.
His bigger job is to put fannies in seats.
I'm being polite here.
The Met board is lacking in the old money because the old money is either dead or gone the way of Bernie Madoff.  I daresay most of the board members to whom Gelb must answer are or were financial mavens oriented to the bottom line. The old question, "Why do you need all those violins anyway?" is not a total joke. So it is that in this lousy economy, the sight of empty seats must mean trouble in the upstairs boardrooms.



Look folks, Gelb is having to balance musical and dramatic sophistication with an audience that wants to be entertained. Or a company controlled by those who want to be entertained. Few of this potential audience-the mass audience, reads Opera-L or patretrre box und so weiter. They pays their money and they don't want to take no chances.So Gelb has to come up with, if not sure fire winners, then flops that can be re- imagined for good copy.

I don't imagine the to-do over the Robert Lepage Ring staging is causing sleepless nights. This kind of argument is good publicity. What is not good publicity is looking like an idiot by silencing a magazine or a blog. Discussed elsewhere. 'Nuf said..

Could you do Peter Gelb's job for one week? Be the target boy for people who express genuine critical concerns over the product, or for those who bitch and don't attend, and for people who have more than a few screws loose, and for those in the middle, who enjoy finding things and people to hate. Then there are the parties to be satisfied and kept happy: Singers, chorus to Renee Fleming, orchestra, wardrobe, stage hands, lights, camera you name it. Any one group can shut down the show. Then there' s the board, needing to be stroked and petted for that extra five hundred thou Bernie didn't get. 

Never mind when Karita or Juan Diego or Riccardo decide not to show up, and Jimmy is sick and some idiot is moaning on line that the soprano in The Enchanted Isle (A Gelb hit in my opinion) smiled too much.You think its all limos, luxury apartments, gourmet on the grand tier and the directors box for Les troyens? For all the time a person has you might as well live across the street at the West Side YMCA and chew on a tuna fish sandwich. Hookers and blow would be nice if they were offered (I'm not saying they are) but not much fun if you're too aggravated or too fucking exhausted.



Gelb is probably not helping himself much with his cold demeanor. He comes across as forbidding and awkward. We don't need a teddy bear in this job, but a little of Rudolf Bing's timing and punchy humor would go a long way.



I have to love an impresario who gives us From the House of the Dead and The Nose; who engages a producer who understands that The Barber of Seville is meant to be funny. The HD presentations make the Met an international brand in the way radio broadcasts used to. We who don't in New York (and I grew up in upstairs standing room but saw my last Met performance in 2005) find ourselves invested in the Met and its repertoire, if not always its people, in our local movie theatres.

Peter Gelb. Want his job? I dare you.

Failures? Who liked the Tosca? I suspect we've seen the last of The First  Emperor. The Ring is the one-or four-productions the public loves to hate. It had a lot to do with machinery and very little with characterization. Peter Grimes, if they had opened one more freakin' window...But Gatti-Casazza had his failures too. Joseph Breil's The Legend was assigned to the young Rosa Ponselle. Sixty years later she told her biographer, "The girl had a feather sticking out of her somewhere" and reported she had burned the score. Who remembers Cleopatra's Night or La campagna sommersa-the latter a flop by Respighi which Elisabeth Rethberg and Martinelli couldn't save. And if you know who the hell is Gatti-Casazza, you need to get out more.

Wagner's Dream

 
Here's what I liked most about Wagner's Dream: we got to see some vulnerability from Peter Gelb. He seemed human and reachable. His public facade up until now had been aloof and reptilian. He was channelling Rudolf Bing, who it was said had a very dry and active wit. Gelb looked worried and looked tense. It made me like him.





The 2 hr film was more the story of Robert Lepage and his ExMachina Company in Quebec. The building and assembly of the controversial machine-the set for the new Ring Cycle at the Met-is certainly a story, but this film was more Robert's Dream than anyone else's. It's a PR tool for the Metropolitan. No harm there but how much blocking and staging was actually done. Why so little discussion of the characters? It was all mechanics and very little character.




That said, I know James Levine withdrew because if illness early on, but still. Where the hell was he? A few rehearsals shots were not enough. He is the artistic conscience of the company and has been for forty years. He deserves respect. If he was unavailable for an extensive interview he could have been acknowledged more. James Levine conducting the Met orchestra in Wagner is was one of the best experiences of my life.




The story of Jay Hunter Morris pinch hitting and making good is worth a separate film. A big, good looking bruiser from Paris Texas who can actually sing (yes, sing) Siegfried. What's not to love? He gave a brief interview during the HD Walkure a few months ago. The audience where I was fell in love with him.






We had a lot of Debbie Voigt-no bad thing. I would have liked more Bryn Terfel and Stephanie Blythe. Who wouldn't? And one thing was clear. Like it or not, I doubt anyone can work on the Lepage Ring without an engineering degree. I fear for all the expense and all the trouble, the 'mystery will be gone' and theRing in New York will no longer be a great event. It was that as recently as the mid nineties, in the Otto Schenk production that had held forth for years. And they didn't have the two big boys: Bryn 'n' Jay.

The Very Worst Met Broadcasts

There are two Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera that live on in infamy forty plus years after the facts.

One is the February 1, 1969 performance of Lucia di Lammermoor with Anna Moffo. There was always a lot of hype around Moffo. She as good copy: gorgeous, nice voice, good actress, and a self described jock from Pennsylvania. She went on with no voice and her career never recovered

The second is the January 29, 1966 performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni . I'm listening to it now. The great Cesare Siepi repeats the role he owned. Gorgeous. Geraint Evans is a gruff Leporello, more dangerous than funny. The trouble begins with soprano Teresa Stich Randall as Donna Anna. This lady had a very distinguished career. On this blustery Saturday afternoon the tone is white and pinched and grating. The beloved Jan Peerce is an impeccable artist but he sounds his age-62- as Don Octavio. The tone has gone from dry to brittle.

And then there's Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, the Elvira. She sang this broadcast and left the Met for good the next day. Her voice simply doesn't respond. The timbre is there, and she is warmly applauded, but every note costs her. There is no 'flow' to the tone. She went on for several more years, so if this was just a bad day who can say? But I often find that these gleefully received-by some-disasters have many a fine point as well. Moffo had the stylish Nicolai Gedda and Renato Bruson in his Met debut. Don Giovanni had Siepi, and well, Mozart!