Hollywood in the MET - the New York Rheingold on screen

In the fifth playtime, the Metropolitan Opera in New York offers the opportunity to follow a performance in technically equipped cinemas. It is obvious that his cannot be a replacement for a visit to a real opera house. If cinema is only real in a theatres, then opera is only real in an opera house.
Yet it is still a positive thing to be able to take a look into the MET and to experience opera on such high level for rather affordable ticket prices.

On-site, you'd otherwise have to pay more than 400 dollars to be allowed in.

At the CinemaxX in Essen, you can have it for 29 euros in the special hall 13. You can follow the screening from New York on sofas while enjoying the non-stop catering service.

Passender Rahmen im CinemaxX: Saal 13 (Foto: CinemaxX Essen)

The hosts put up a special offering for the cinema opera visitors in the cinema's auditorium, including wine, champagne, canapés and bagels. The musical enjoyment was thus not blurred by the usual popcorn rustling.

James Levine celebrated

James Levine is currently celebrating his 40th anniversary in workin with MET – and the audience honours honours his work with thunderous applause. He has been their musical leader for 30 years. Levine IS the Metropolitan Opera, so to speak. In 2004, he also took on the Boston Symphony Orchestra and has thus been leading two of the most commonly known orchestras worldwide. From 1999 until 2003, Levine was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

The joy that the ailing Levine seems to have with his musicians during practice and on the concert evening, can be directly noticed in the musical quality of the show. Even through the loudspeakers of the cinema auditorium, you can hear the subtleties of Richard Wagner's work which are really impressive and borderline ingenious.

That the sound of the voices doesn't fully satisfy through the transmission as they were heard live on-site is something that you can get over immediately.


The Ring of the Nibelung, the eights

The eights Ring of MET is a special one: The stage set consists of single, flexibly movable elements that are partly serving as projection area, partly symbolising different levels but also provide for vast impressions as the actors seem to freely walk or slide down on them.
The daughters Floßhilde, Wellgunde and Wogline can almost swim across stage and play with Alberich until he steals the Rhinegold. The "evening before" the Ring of the Nibelung points at the basic conflicts of the epochal play that was created by Richard Wagner.

After 2 ½ hours without break – which makes "Das Rheingold" the shortes opera in the tetralogy - the performance ends in an impressive image: the entrance into Walhall gives you goose-bumps in the cinema - and results in standing ovations in New York.
Wow! What Robert Lepage created with this production is yet to be surpassed - also on a technical level.

The costumes were kept rather classical. The stage was only turned into an underwater scene, into the dark Nibelheim and then into the gate to Walhall through the moving elements and the respective lighting. Ingeniously simple but simply ingenious.

One hardly has to mention that the voices belong to the team of the top Wagner actors.

Additional screenings for MET operas in the cinema:
23.10.2010, 13.11, 11.12., 26.02.2011, 09.04., 30.04., 14.05..

Freia: Wendy Bryn Harmer
Fricka: Stephanie Blythe
Erda: Patricia Bardon
Loge: Richard Croft
Mime: Gerhard Siegel
Wotan: Bryn Terfel
Alberich: Eric Owens
Fasolt: Franz-Josef Selig
Fafner: Hans-Peter König



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