CheekyChicago

Cheeky ladies, The New York Metropolitan Opera wants us. Since general manager Peter Gelb took over in 2006, the Met has launched a full-on seduction of our demographic. Big-name Hollywood and Broadway directors like Julie Taymor, Anthony Minghella and Chicago’s own Mary Zimmerman have drawn raves. Singers excel at acting and movement, in contrast with the old “park and bark” style of diva delivery. Orchestra seats can drop to $20. Of course, that’s all well and good if you’re in New York. But to really attract a new generation to the aging art of opera, it takes eye candy and behind-the-scenes access at our cinemas and laptops. So Gelb introduced The Met: Live in HD.

This is not your grandmother’s public television replay of the Halleluiah Chorus. Ten cameras, including a robotic camera in the orchestra pit, deliver the action live via satellite to over one million viewers at specially equipped cinemas worldwide. With pre-show fact graphics, audience close-ups and opera star hosts doing backstage interviews, the coverage feels more like ESPN than WTTW. And yes, if you miss it you can download it. And yes, there’s a Facebook page.

I recently stopped by the Kerasotes Theater on Webster for the encore broadcast of Bellini’s La Sonnambula, directed by Zimmerman and starring French coloratura soprano Natalie Dessay. The pair made a huge splash in 2007’s Lucia di Lammermoor, with many pointing to Dessay’s physical performance in Lucia’s famous mad scene as the epitome of the Met’s innovations in directing and acting.

Zimmerman’s staging of La Sonnambula as a play within a play, set in the rehearsal space for a production of the same opera, stirred some controversy among purists. La Sonnambula tells the somewhat unlikely story of a young Swiss woman, Amina, with a bad sleepwalking habit. She’s betrothed to her lover Elvino, much to the chagrin of his ex, the ignored Lisa. When Amina sleepwalks into the bed of a visiting Count, her gossipy village turns on her. The Count tries to save Amina’s reputation with medical proof that sleepwalking is real, but Lisa seizes on the fallout to almost win Elvino back. Luckily, Amina sleep-sings her way back into Elvino’s heart with subconscious confessions of love.

From this theater person’s perspective, Zimmerman’s leap from that story line to the shenanigans of a rehearsal process feels dead on. The bitter Lisa is re-imagined as a fed up stage manager, played by stopwatch-wearing soprano Jennifer Black with subtle comedy and true anguish. Dessay’s Amina is the moody starlet whose antics get excused by a bona fide diagnosis. Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez plays Elvino as the alpha-male actor with an explosive jealous streak. It’s an amusing concept, yet the performances remain deeply heartfelt (the HD cameras reveal tears in actors’ eyes).

To my mind, the production makes a point about the often-nonsensical process of creating art. In the end, despite all the strange ups and downs, the street-clothes-wearing actors don their traditional Swiss costumes and the show-within-a-show goes on with glee. It’s a classic example of the Met’s new tendency toward both backstage access and breaks with tradition.

As for the music, I’ll leave it to the real opera experts to analyze what I’ll simply call mind-blowing singing. But on that topic, the sportscast-like broadcast really helps non-connoisseurs along. When Deborah Voigt, the preeminent dramatic soprano and our down-to-earth host, interviews Dessay and Flórez the moment they rush offstage for intermission – they’re still panting! — she asks what high notes we should watch out for in the second act. The virtuosos talk tricks of the trade, joke around and shout out to their families overseas. I was half expecting a “from the pit” interview with maestro Evelino Pidò in a headset. Maybe next time.

Voigt does make the crucial point you might already be thinking: Nothing compares with the sound of world-class voices in a live opera house. So visit your local opera. Fortunately, that’s easy for us in Chicago with our Lyric. But whether you’re a lifelong aficionado or a novice aria-phobe, The Met: Live in HD brings you inside the opera world the way only cameras can.

You have just three more chances to catch the Met HD broadcasts this season, and one’s not an opera at all, but a documentary about the high-pressure struggles of young singers auditioning for The Met. You know you want to watch.

The Audition

Sunday, April 19th, 2pm Central.

Info and tickets here.

La Cenerentola by Rossini