The Met's Barber of Seville at the movies

Rossini:Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Live from the Metropolitan Opera
Renaissance Edwards Cinemas, Alhambra
Saturday, March 24, 2007, 10:30am

I rather enjoyed the Metropolitan Opera simulcast of The Barber of Seville on Saturday. I still have lots of fun at the movie theatre, even though by now the novelty value of the broadcasts has worn off. No one's quite so breathless with enthusiasm anymore, but nevertheless two of the Alhambra Renaissance's biggest auditoriums were virtually sold out. And audience members are beginning to recognize each other in the theatres and popcorn lines (for better or worse - shudder).

Having been to all five of screenings, I'm settling into a comfortable - if nice - routine. I like the free parking, I know my favorite place to sit in the theatre, when to break for the bathroom, where to eat afterwards... and I quite enjoy watching opera in t-shirt, jeans and a fluffy sweatshirt.

And it seems the Met is now settling into a routine of its own on the other side of the screen. They've got their formula down for broadcast format, camera angles and everything: this time Kristen Chenoweth gave the introduction from the Met costume shop (last time it was Mikhail Baryshnikov; other times it's been Katie Couric, Peter Gelb and Zhang Ziyi). Chenoweth's intro was amusing to me for different reasons than they probably intended: everytime I see her out of character I'm taken aback - I still can't believe she talks like that in real life, all squeaky and stuff. And she was just SO CUTE - "and no body dies!" (cue the Orbitz gum grin). She's definitely a creature of the stage. And all I could do was stare at her boobs: I mean the dress cut so low that all you could see was those boobs hanging there - and trust me, I'm not one to look at boobs (ahem).

The Met's camera angles formula during the opera itself actually didn't work so much this time, at least in the beginning. Past broadcasts have featured lots of closeups and 'creative' camera angles (ie from the wings looking out towards the conductor and into the dark auditorium). But this production of Seville, directed by Light in the Piazza director Bartlett Scherr, spills out around the orchestra pit on a parterre; it's so huge and theatrical that a bit of distance would actually have been preferable to the extreme close ups usually favored. There were also lots of camera jiggles and 'oopsie' quick zoomouts as they realized something was suddenly happening on another side of the stage.

After I got over the motion sickness and settled into the rhythm of the production, all was fine. Scherr's direction was really wonderful: I felt like I was watching a fun Broadway musical instead of a traditional opera. There was so much strong acting and spiffy staging that everything flowed smoothly and quickly. I really enjoyed Joyce DiDonato's Rossina and John DelCarlo's Dr. Bartolo. Del Carlo especially was very funny as the villain of the piece. Peter Mattei played Figaro for the sexiness, which was a hoot to see in addition to the great sound coming out of his mouth when he was singing. Admittedly, I was said "huh?" when Juan Diego Florez comes out and he's way shorter and not as sultry as all those Met publicity photos for Seville made him out to be. I guess they wanted to push a heartthrob image for Count Almaviva so they used selective camera angles, but Florez was lovely, romantic and funny all the same.

EARLIER TODAY... I turned on the Met's live audio stream of Andrea Chenier at its web site tonight to be greeted with total silence. Went to another computer to see if my work computer was just being lame (it usually is), but total silence there too. And total silence thirty minutes in, when I gave up. Sadness. Earlier in the season, it seemed like they completely forgot to turn on the web stream: it kept going to their pre-recorded "Please tune back during broadcast hours" snippet (which I can sing now, since I've heard it so many times). Did they forget to connect the cables tonight, too?