With the closure of the Met and other opera companies around the U.S., groups have taken to other means of entertaining, from livestreams to songs delivered one-on-one over the phone.
By Heidi Waleson
June 23, 2020 3:44 pm ET
On June 1, the Metropolitan Opera canceled its performances through the end of 2020. Two weeks later, Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera did the same. The challenges of rehearsing, producing and attending opera in large theaters in the era of Covid-19 seemed insurmountable, especially since phase 4 of reopening—which allows for large group gatherings—appears distant in these cities. Some European arts groups are resuming live performance with drastically revised programs; most notably, the Salzburg Festival will present “Così fan tutte” and “Elektra” in August, with stringent testing and contact-tracing protocols; reduced, socially distanced audiences; and no intermissions. U.S. groups are nowhere near that point, and the reliance on earned income in the U.S. means that the economics don’t work with such drastically reduced ticket sales.
In the meantime, the Met and other opera companies have opened their archives, flooding the internet with performances. Remote “live” vocal experiences have also flourished, as singers turn their living rooms into stages. Back in March, when quarantine and its implications were still new, the poignant duo of Joyce DiDonato and Piotr Beczala performed arias and scenes from their abruptly canceled Met “Werther” in the mezzo’s living room for an online audience (the recording is available on YouTube).
The Met’s four-hour live online At-Home Gala on April 25 resulted in numerous delights, like Erin Morley excelling in both the coloratura and the piano accompaniment for her Donizetti aria and Jamie Barton’s explosive rendition of Verdi’s “O don fatale.” These homemade productions are charming and immediate, and the desire to share is palpable.
Artists have been coming up with creative ways to turn limitations into opportunities. Composer Kamala Sankaram and librettist Rob Handel, working with HERE Arts Center, created an ingenious and entertaining 10-minute live Zoom opera, “All Decisions Will Be Made by Consensus”; one of the performances is available on Facebook.
The conceit of the piece is Zoom itself. Five activists trying to plan a demonstration appear in their separate windows; the joke is that each is repeating his or her own point, and none of them are listening. Instead, they are singing over each other. Because of Zoom’s issues with lag time, making it impossible for people in different spaces to be on the same beat, the piece is aleatoric, constructed out of looping vocal lines, with Ms. Sankaram, who also sings one of the roles, controlling the musical action with a pulse-less electronic background track. Would it work for a longer piece? If anyone can figure it out, Ms. Sankaram, who is also working on a virtual-reality opera, would be the one to try.
Heartbeat Opera, which rethinks classics, had planned to workshop “Lady M,” a look at Verdi’s “Macbeth” from Lady Macbeth’s point of view, when the pandemic forced it to adapt. The workshop was done online: six singers and six instrumentalists and the creative team, headed by director Ethan Heard and music director Jacob Ashworth, participated from their homes via Zoom. Heartbeat also came up with an inventive way to share their work with an audience, selling a limited number of $30 tickets to 32 60-minute “virtual soirées” that featured live performances, Q&As with artists and creators, a behind-the-scenes documentary and a music video of soprano Felicia Moore performing Lady M’s sleepwalking scene.
The live performances were a little rough and ready, but the two prerecorded videos were gripping, especially Ms. Moore’s sleepwalking scene, which found high drama in her vibrant soprano, Daniel Schlosberg’s creepily brilliant musical arrangement (clarinet and trombone are two of the instruments) and the video component that she filmed herself. A video editor did the careful layering of images—hand washing in multiple sinks, shadowy corridors, candles—but Ms. Moore’s choices drove the scene. Heartbeat plans to perform the whole opera live next spring. If that’s impossible, they will move it online, which could be sensational.
On Site Opera devised a more analog concept: personal performances via telephone. Baritone Mario Diaz-Moresco (with pianist Spencer Myer) and soprano Jennifer Zetlan (with pianist David Shimoni) are singing Beethoven’s song cycle “An die ferne Geliebte” to individual ticket purchasers, one listener at a time. Ticket buyers ($40) choose a time slot (100, split between the two singers, through July 6). The listener is not just the audience, but part of the show—improvising the role of the “distant beloved.” If you think this all sounds a little awkward, it is.
I signed up for the baritone version. I received two emails in advance, both generic love letters (“Each day without you is like a day without breathing” is a typical line), concluding with English translations of the German texts, and signed “Your Beloved.” At 7 p.m. on Friday, I got my call from Mr. Diaz-Moresco, who gamely performed an introductory script by Monet Hurst-Mendoza (“Oh, my love, it’s so good to hear your voice!”) and elicited some equally banal responses from me. He also warned me that he has a big voice, so I should adjust the volume on my phone. I did, but both the speaker and headphones settings produced a tinny, intermittent sound that left much of the warmth and color of voice and piano to the imagination.
Still, Mr. Diaz-Moresco captured the protagonist’s ardent spirit, his identification with the natural world, and his sorrow about the lengthy separation; Mr. Myer’s depiction of resignation in the piano introduction to the final song was particularly moving. For better aural fidelity, listen to them do the cycle on Mr. Diaz-Moresco’s website. That performance doesn’t have the lengthy, spoken anecdote, interpolated into the second song, about our first date at Coney Island, however. I’m all for breaking the fourth wall, and I enjoyed the unusual intimacy between singer and listener, but imagining myself into this slightly cheesy love story was finally a little too weird.
Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).
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