The Met Goes to the Movies: The Magic Flute in Emeryville

If you didn’t see The Magic Flute and haven’t yet booked to see one of the other live HiDef Metropolitan Opera telecasts, navigate to your nearest online ticket service and snap up a ticket if there are any remaining. It’s an amazingly pleasant experience to sit in a reclining seat with lots of legroom and a clear view of the screen and to be able to see the performers in giant close-up and to hear the orchestra in crisp surround sound. If you were in the Opera House and could order the stage crew to position your Barcalounger directly on top of the prompter’s box, this would be your vantage point.

This abridged Magic Flute was like a Flute For Kids/Lion King hybrid and was happily light on the boring Masonic stuff that usually stops this show dead. Julie Taymor kept the production firmly in fairyland with dream-like puppetry and dazzlingly beautiful and clever costumes. Nathan Gunn as Papageno had some special fun with his removable wicker codpiece, and the fabulous Erika Miklósa, who makes her San Francisco Opera debut in October in this role, was gorgeously evil as Queen of the Night, first appearing in an ethereal multi-winged white gown and later in a blood red version of the same costume. The strange young spirit boys were perversely weird indeed in diapers and long white beards. René Pape as Sarastro was encased in wondrously thick interlocking panels of heavy gold brocade. He sang magnificently of course but you could almost see the eiskaltes Bier he was visualizing for himself as a reward as soon as he could get out of that inferno of a costume. The huge rotating set, however, was a disappointingly dark construction of Plexiglas and scaffolding and might have been more appropriate for one of Pamela Rosenberg’s productions, but the cast climbed over and around it and made the best of the extensive real estate.

So what was it like? On the plus side, the parking garage cost only one dollar, the seating was extremely comfortable, the sight lines were perfection, and the sound was sublime. One could also visit the concession stand and, after taking out a second mortgage, return with a hot dog, a hot garlic Parmesan pretzel, a giant bag of buttered popcorn, a gallon of soda, and a big box of Raisinettes. The HiDef picture was bright, sharp, and about as good as it could possibly be.

On the slightly minus side, the show was directed for later PBS distribution so the framing was obviously meant for small-screen television viewing. Close-ups were huge and very sharp. Every bead of sweat was apparent and the makeup artistry could be studied in great detail. And since the viewer is virtually onstage, a lot of the stagecraft was clearly evident. The black-clad puppeteers were anything but invisible and every wire and control device could be examined. The audio was so sensitive that each creak, footstep, and cough could be heard; if you were in the audience and later watched the rebroadcast you could probably identify the sound of your own swallowing. And there was an almost constant rumbling of scenery deep in the bowels of the backstage area. Some, however, might consider this immediacy a plus rather than a minus. Imagine you were cast as a Super in this show and had been positioned downstage center and told to face upstage. You could almost hear Met ASM Terry Ganley (yes, she was listed as ASM in the credits) over your shoulder shushing you when you rattle your Milk Duds box. That’s exactly what watching this telecast was like.

These events will never replace the feeling of actually being in an opera house, but they give you something different; an intimate not-to-be-missed experience for the bargain price of only $18. Let’s hope that in the very near future San Francisco Opera can jump through the inevitable union (and financial) hoops and go beyond simulcasts in the park and into multiplex cinemas around the world.

— Mike Harvey