Opera on the Big Screen
21 December

---

In the run up to Christmas, I had a couple of operatic treats courtesy of the digital revolution.

The first also brought with it a trip over to Wigan to see Colin. He is fast approaching retirement and is now wearing apparatus behind his ears to assist his hearing. We made a jolly threesome over a meal before heading down to the Odeon cinema in Wigan for a live relay from Covent Garden.

We saw Englebert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel. It's been a decade or so since I last attended this marvellous work at English National Opera. Even so, I doubt that I would have made a special effort to travel to London to attend these performances. And I would have missed a real treat. I had heard of Angelika Kirchschlager and so was not surprised that she gave a good performance as Hansel. I hadn't heard of Diana Damrau and so was completely knocked out by her Gretel.

Elizabeth Connell and Thomas Allen gave stalwart performances as the mother and father but it was a real mistake to cast Anja Silja as the Witch - she is just too far gone to sing the rôle properly. Colin Davies conducted a lush (slightly slow) reading of the score and the production was by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier. We all had a good night out. And Ross and I were back home and in bed by half past ten. We might go to Wigan for a cinema show again sometime.

Come Saturday, Colin and I met up again for another opera, this time along with Roland.

We were at FACT for another live broadcast from the Met in New York - this time of Massenet's little performed work, Thaïs. There are quite often very good reasons why works are seldom performed; sadly, the reason is often that they are of historical interest but are actually not very good. In this case, the work turned out to be a real cracker. However, it needed two belting stars to make it work and, in Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson, it had just two such stars. They were fabulous.

I was also impressed by Michael Schade's clear and well projected tenor. Jesús López-Cobos conducted with a real sense of style for the perfumed exoticism and eroticism in the score. John Cox's production was sensible on the whole. We all agreed that we had been well served by the experience. Colin was most pleased. He has waited nearly forty years to see the work performed live.

So, to compare and contrast the two experiences.

The performance of Thaïs was certainly of a different order than that of Hänsel und Gretel. I'd have been happy to attend either in a live incarnation. However, the Thaïs had more of a tingle factor thanks, particularly, to Renée Fleming's vocalism. She almost persuades me that I might attend the live broadcasts of her singing Violetta at Covent Garden next June.

However, the broadcast style from Covent Garden was much to be preferred. The American director couldn't stop moving the camera around. We had to be LOOKING at something all the time. It was as though he didn't trust us to sit in our seats while there was just music playing - we had to look backstage at the scenery being shifted about even when it was distracting and inappropriate.

In one respect, I wish the British director could learn a little trick or two. Again, the presentation was directed for a small scale television set. In a cinema, we could quite easily have coped with more distant views of the performers on stage in the setting as visualised by the two producers. And, these days, with larger, wide screen and high definition televisions, most viewers at home can too.

However, I've now been to four of this type of live telecast performance - these two plus Doctor Atomic and La Bohème . I like the danger that the live aspect gives and I like the fact that I am with others so that I get a sense of communal enjoyment. Whilst I wouldn't consider giving up live performance in my current circumstances, I can see this style of show as being a useful supplement to my regular diet.