Opera on screen

Whether the Met's Live In HD series, televised BBC broadcasts and the growth of the DVD / Blu-Ray market are genuinely opening the art-form up to new audiences or playing to a well-established niche is probably open to debate but filmed performances are going to be the most accessible way for majority of people to experience opera at the moment.

What's good / bad / available on Youtube?

I saw Dmitri Tcherniakov's version of The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh at the weekend and really enjoyed it. Svetlana Ignatovich is wonderful as Fevroniya and the anglo-Ukrainian tenor John Daszak a suitably weaselly Grishka.

It's available as part of the new Opus Arte Russian Classics box set, along with a bleak Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (with the excellent Eva-Maria Westbroek) and versions of Pikovaya Dama, Onegin and Boris Godunov i haven't had a chance to watch yet.

What are the standout Met HD productions available? Macbeth with Netrebko is a relatively recent favourite.

C/D, S/D etc,

I saw one of the Met Live in HD productions in a cinema. While it was a very good experience I can't really compare it too seeing opera live - it made a lot more sense than the filmed theatre I've seen, but still seemed to be missing key elements...

There's an editorial in the current issue of Sight & Sound with a passing remark on cinema screenings of opera and Shakespeare plays that suggests opera is shown in cinemas because its cultural value is similar to french films (or something along those lines) - not sure it makes total sense, but there are paradoxes to be appreciated and a "cinematic crisis" to be taken into account when understanding the phenomenon. (Netflix wouldn't release opera, right?)

For getting acquainted with different productions and works I imagine it's great though.

That is interesting. It's not the same as seeing it live but, as you suggest, easier than catching several different productions of the same opera or casts that only come together on the other side of the world.

There is a fragment of the ritual of 'going to the opera' that carries over to cinema screenings, I think. Possibly more than most theatre or cinema, the audience has its own role to play in the experience of opera - whether it's old guys reading along with the score and shaking their head when the tenor misses a note or unprompted conversations in the interval about the relative merits of various performances, there is a fanaticism and partisanship about a section of the opera audience that brings it close to sport. I don't know whether going to the pub to see a football match vs watching it on TV at home is a suitable analogy. Having that collective experience in a more democratic setting is a good compromise.

Blu-Ray is great too, though - particularly the added ability to pause, rewind, follow the libretto without straining your eyes, bring outside snacks, etc.

I think Netflix probably would carry opera but would imagine that there might be resistance from rights holders that want to sell £25 discs or stream via their own platforms / release for download on iTunes.

I think you're right on all points and appreciate the football/pub analogy. Definitely like the democratic idea, but those Met screening tickets are really expensive in Denmark (~40 euros).

Maybe there's a sense of exhilerating risk connected to the live setting (not only live temporality but spatiality) that doesn't carry over as well in the cinema. All the same I'm bookmarking this thread, I'd like good tips on blu-ray releases too!

I caught up with Tcherniakov's controversial (profligately expensive) staging of Prince Igor for the Met on Blu-Ray today. He seems completely obsessed with wringing as much psychological insight as possible out if his operas so it was interesting to see him take on something that fits about twenty minutes of plot into three and a half hours. He struggles manfully but there is only so much you can do with source material that just doesn't hang together as drama despite all the big themes of war, honour, failure, Russian nationalism, love, death, etc

That said, Borodin wrote stunning music and the Met delivers as well as ever. Ildar Abdrazakov is very solid in the title role, Oksana Dyka (who I used to go to watch at the Shevchenko in Kyiv years ago) makes a fine Yaroslavna and Mikhail Petrenko is convincing as her evil brother. Anita Rachvelishvili, who spends all of her scenes spilling out of a nightgown, is great value as the khan's daughter, chasing after the young prince. Staging the Polovtsian dances in a poppy field so you can't see anyone's feet is initially slightly comic but works rather well over all. It's visually striking, if nothing else.

Still working my way through a stack of discs. This week i saw:

La Fanciulla del West (Stemme / Kaufmann / Wiener Staatsoper): resists the invitation to camp it up like Calamity Jane by bringing the action forward to a down-at-heel mid-20th century mining community. Nina Stemme initially seems a little ill-suited to Puccini but her Wagnerian training really pays dividends during the high-voltage gambling scene. Kaufmann elevates everything he is in, and does the same here. The rest of the cast is good, on the whole - Tomasz Konieczky doesn't have the strongest of voices but brings good dramatic weight to Jack Rance.

Falstaff (Maestri / Meade / NY Met): a complete delight from start to finish. Ambrogio Maestri and Falstaff were made for each other - his warmth, charm, humour, pathos and Giant-Haystacks build have made him the definitive Sir John of the modern era across 20 separate productions. Everyone else does well to support - Angela Meade and Stephanie Blythe have fun as Alice and Mistress Quickly and the young Cuban-American soprano Lisette Oropesa makes an endearingly winsome Nannetta. The 50s setting works well and some of the set-pieces, particularly Nanetta's aria, are very well handled. It's a very fine staging of a magnificent opera.

La Fille du Regiment (Dessay / Florez / ROH): another production lifted to great heights by a spectacular lead performance - this time by Natalie Dessay. Her combination of physical comedy and stunning bel canto seems to verge on the superhuman at times. I assume it's not easy to hit a high C while being held horizontally above the heads of eight members of the chorus. Juan Diego Florez also excels as the lovestruck, lederhosen-clad partisan Tonio. Dawn French probably draws more laughs than she should as the Duchess of Crackentorp but that's the nature of the role.

Great thread, excellent writing throughout. Nothing to add now except that I saw those productions of Prince Igor and Falstaff at the Met and your descriptions are spot-on.