The Metropolitan Opera was the first to burst the bounds of its own stage to stream high-definition digital transmissions of live performances to cinema screens around the country. Then Britain’s National Theatre started beaming plays from its home on London’s South Bank. And now Broadway is getting in on the act.
The Met’s Live in HD series serves aficionados who can’t get to New York (or pay the ticket prices, which top off at over $300) as well as attracting new audiences to a love of opera. The initiative, now in its sixth season, has been wildly successful. Abby Gilmore, manager of Cinemark in Hadley, one of six participating venues in the region, reports that the screenings are consistently sold out, with a steady increase in younger patrons.
The National Theatre simulcasts began two years ago and are now seen in over 300 cinemas around the world. Area screens include Memorial Hall in Shelburne Falls and the Amherst Cinema, whose director, Carol M. Johnson, observes that the shows are “building new audiences for the arts—and that is a good feeling.” Piggybacking on the NT Live program, in June the cinema will screen the Roundabout Theatre’s Broadway production of Oscar Wilde’s epigrammatic comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest.
And next week another Broadway show comes to local movie houses. Cinemark and Rave Cinemas in West Springfield are adding rhythm ‘n’ blues to the operatic lineup with Memphis, the hit musical about white teenagers’ discovery of black music in Elvis’s hometown.
The multiple-camera renditions of the stage productions are, in my experience, pretty good at balancing cinematic close-ups with the feel of a live performance. We get a more intimate experience of the show, but lose some of the scope and scale that seeing the whole stage affords.
Not a little of the credit for these stage-to-screen programs’ success with audiences must go to the admission prices, which are considerably higher (in the $20-25 range) than regular movie tickets but far more affordable than most of the seats in the theaters they’re beamed from. It’s also a win-win for the cinemas and the producing theaters, who gain added revenue and new audiences they wouldn’t otherwise see.
The National Theatre series has been such a phenomenon that the Amherst Cinema is now running three encore showings of each production in addition to the live screening. Make that seven shows in total for the National’s current sold-out hit, Frankenstein, in which two fiery young British actors, Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch, alternate performances as the Creature and his creator. Directed by filmmaker Danny Boyle, this high-voltage, visually mesmerizing version of Mary Shelley’s Gothic classic plumbs questions of morality, theology and sexuality bypassed by the neck-bolted movie monster. Screenings of Version Two begin this week.
The Met’s on-screen season, which also graces venues in West Springfield, Shelburne Falls, Williamstown, Great Barrington and Brattleboro, continues this Saturday with Capriccio, Richard Strauss’ “conversation piece for music,” followed on April 30 by Verdi’s romantic tragedy Il Trovatore and on May 14 by Die Walkire from Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
Venue and ticket information: National Theatre Live, www.ntlive.com; The Met Live in HD, www.metoperafamily.org; Memphis, fathomevents.com and individual theaters.
