The Exterminating Angel embraces the now
NEW YORK— Yes, those were live sheep roaming the stage of the Metropolitan Opera last Saturday, as anyone could testify who was in the house with me or who watched
The Exterminating Angel in a Live in HD telecast in movie theatres around the world.
Roaming sheep were not the only oddity to be experienced in Thomas Ades’ opera. Based on a classic surrealist film by Luis Bunuel, the plot focuses on an upper-class dinner party whose guests and butler find themselves unable to leave the room.
And if this seems an odd premise for an opera, bear in mind that its English composer grew up in the world of surrealism, his mother an art historian and leading authority on the work of the great surrealist Salvador Dali. He even co-authored the libretto with director Tom Cairns and he conducts the orchestra at the Met as well.
Ades is now generally regarded as one of the major operatic voices of his generation and The Exterminat
ing Angel, a Met co-commission, represents a followup to its presentation of his earlier opera, The Tempest. If anything, The Exterminating
Angel is being even more widely applauded, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times going so far as to declare that if you see only one opera at the Met this season, this should be it.
The season typically encompasses about two dozen operas, far more than can be seen on any other North American stage.
All of those productions can be heard on the weekly Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts ( The Exter
minating Angel is scheduled for April 21) and 10 of them have been singled out for the Live in HD telecasts (Puccini’s Tosca will be next, Jan. 27). And you wonder why the Met has become very nearly the world’s opera company? The telecasts can be seen in more than 2,000 theatres in 73 countries, several of them in the Greater Toronto Area.
But back to The Exterminating Angel. Such is Ades’ taste for originality that one of the notes sung by soprano Audrey Luna (who plays an opera singer) is reportedly the highest ever sung in the 137-year history of the Met, a stratospheric A above high C.
Sheep and extra high notes are not what chiefly recommend The Exterminating Angel, however. This is an opera that uses the musical language of our time with remarkable lucidity.
Peter Gelb takes understandable pride in its presentation and in his effort to introduce a contemporary work each season “to keep the art form alive.”
The Met’s general manager is the man responsible for inaugurating The Met: Live in HD and thereby broadening the audience, much as the Canadian Opera Company’s earlier inauguration of Englishlanguage surtitles has done.
While admitting that the telecasts have cost the company’s New York performances some of their older subscribers, he insists that they have added younger single-ticket buyers to replace them, fully two-thirds of the total audience now coming from outside the U.S.
A former film and TV producer himself, Gelb leaves the opera house during the telecasts to join his technical crew in a large van parked in the street behind the opera house, while 10 high definition cameras, including a robotic camera moving back and forth across the stage, track the action.
Additional backstage cameras record intermission interviews and the work of an army of stagehands moving tons of scenery. If anyone wonders why ticket prices are so high — although they can be as low as $25 (U.S.) — these glimpses of the enormous physical task of producing opera should prove illuminating.
To keep abreast of the latest technology, the Met rents rather than owns its recording equipment but, as a self-producer, it is fully in charge of the telecasts, which cost about $1 million (U.S.) each and make money for the company.
“Cultural habits are changing,” Gelb reflected back in his office, “and audiences are diminishing. There hasn’t been music in the public schools in decades. So we have to work to remain part of the cultural conversation.
“Money isn’t the issue. Bruce Springsteen tickets on Broadway cost more than most Met tickets. We find that new work is drawing a whole new crowd. We had 80,000 new ticket buyers last year. And we are developing new software to make our performances even more accessible.
“I was an usher at the Met when I was in high school. I saw the enthusiasm of those people standing in the family circle. That hasn’t changed. But you can’t do the same stuff all the time. My job is to surprise the audience and stimulate them.”
That is where The Exterminating Angel comes in.