La Rondine on the Big Screen

Love birds on the operatic stage and in real life, the two stars appeared on the huge screen singing their hearts out. Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna, in high definition, seemed to relish playing in Puccini’s opera La Rondine. The audience of over 300 clearly enjoyed watching them perform in this simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

That Saturday matinee marked the first time I had seen the Met’s hot shot new technology at work. Yes, it is like actually being there, except that you see everyone and everything up close. You are treated to dazzlingly intimate views of the stage and all the performers and you hear them with great clarity.

Before the performance, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, announced that Angela Gheorghiu was suffering from a cold and asked the audience to take that handicap into consideration. However, this singer’s performance certainly belied the diagnosis. One cynic, close to me, suggested that the singer may have exaggerated the symptoms beforehand in order to ensure the listener’s admiration.

La Rondine, (The Swallow,) had not been presented at the Met since 1936. It usually has been regarded as one of Puccini’s minor works. However, critic Anthony Tommasini has praised the opera as showing the composer’s musical inventiveness and willingness to experiment with new forms.

Most importantly, though, the music is gorgeous from beginning to end. The opera is filled with beautiful melodies, enough to make you wonder about the neglect it has received.

Aside from the roles taken by the two stars, there are other characters in the opera who draw audience attention. Most notable are the impudent maid Lisette and the opinionated poet Prunier..

Well-drawn minor characters, and a relatively small chorus, add to the  richness of the mix. A café scene brings out animated dancing and waltz music to die for.

The story centers on Magda, a courtesan in Paris, who becomes infatuated with Ruggero, a naïve and respectable fellow who falls for her. They celebrate their love in beautiful melody but, when he proposes marriage to her, her past life emerges as a problem. How can Magda not tell him of her background?

She does. And that brings the drama to an end. In the last scene, we see lurking at the edge of the scene Rambaldo, the old gentlemen who keeps her. He does not have to sing a word; his mere presence signifies the end of any thoughts of Magda marrying her true love.

Some members of the audience, assembled in the movie theater complex in Revere, clapped at the end of the arias as if they were actually at the Met in New York. A spirited group, they seemed confirmed opera fans, most seasoned over many years.

At 80, I seemed among the youngest present. This demographic I found disappointing. How much better it would have been to have young people among us. But even an opera as tuneful as La Rondine, and as romantically sentimental, does not attract youth. To do so may be the next challenge for the Met.

The technology, perfect through most of the opera, faltered a few times, much to the chagrin of the audience. But, for the most part, the technicians in New York delivered a pleasing combination of sight and sound.

First shown in movie theaters in December 2006, these Met broadcasts have proven a big hit. This brilliant new way of marketing opera has attracted some one million viewers, at last count, in movie theaters all over America and in many other countries.

Between the acts, Renee Fleming, a reigning Met diva, interviewed the two stars. This practice, in my opinion, carries marketing too far. Why should singers, exhausted by their exertions, be expected to stop on their way to their dressing rooms backstage, when they need the chance to recover and prepare for the following act?

I also consider it an esthetic mistake to let us see the singers as real life people. It breaks the mystique whereby you have identified them with the roles they play. No matter how charming and insightful they turn out to be, I don’t want to meet Angela when she is in the middle of being Magda, nor Roberto rather than Ruggero.

Some of the other features you see backstage, such as the preparations for the next scene, are more justifiable, since they give you welcome insight into the work that goes into an opera. And you can admire the props and scenery that contribute to the opera’s overall effect.

Technology in the service of the arts can produce wonders. Opera in movie theaters qualifies as one of those happy collaborations that open this art to many more people. Even addicts like me with long experience of opera houses, can find further pleasure in seeing an opera on the large screen at the very moment when it is being performed.

Richard Griffin