The Met broadcast is a-changing

Yesterday, was the first-of-the-season Saturday matinee live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera. We've listened to these Saturday broadcasts for years - when the broadcast season starts it's like visiting with an old, familiar friend.

But, yikes - our old friend has had a makeover! If I had thought a moment about this it wouldn't have been a big surprise with Peter Gelb taking the helm at the Met. He has been seriously driving the Met to become more "relevant" to today. But it wasn't until the first intermission feature that it dawned on me that this would of course naturally extend to the broadcast.

Kobie - Are you nervous?

Drake liked the changes - I still need to get use to them. First, there was "live backstage" reporting at the first intermission that struck me as People-Magazine-esque. The reporter is wondering around backstage, reporting on who's doing what - and then decides to visit the lead tenor in his dressing room. So, you literally hear her knock on the door and it's all staged as a kind of "surprise" visit. Now, I'm not opposed to this idea per se, but the questions were along the lines of "There are millions of people listening to you at this very moment... does that make your nervous? How do you handle the pressure?". I thought Kobie van Rensburg handled it very gracefully, but why couldn't she ask an interesting question - one that got into his interpretation of the role or the unique aspects of the production?

Then, there was the idea to add an "interactive" element to the intermission Opera Quiz. Again, not a bad idea per se, but they had Beverly Sills as the quiz master and she was tasked with explaining how audience members could answer the interactive question via email. But as she fully admitted she has NO IDEA on how to use email. So she was reading the instructions like a robot from the script, adding commentary such as "put you answer in the subject line - if you know what that is - I have no idea..." Now, on one level, if you love Beverly Sills this is kind of cute and charming, but on the other hand it just made the whole idea seem kind of ridiculous.

I can image some long-time listeners were outraged. I'm actually pretty much on-board with what Peter Gelb is doing at the Met, so I'm keeping an open mind on the broadcast changes. It was just the first broadcast, so I imagine they will work to refine it and work out the kinks.