Gently down the stream
Beginning tomorrow night with the season premiere of Rigoletto, the Met will offer weekly free (yes, that's right, free) streaming broadcasts of opera performances over their website, metopera.org. Further broadcasts through the end of the year will include:
- Rigoletto (Siurina, Calleja, Pons) Wednesday October 25
- Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci (Guleghina, Racette, Licitra) Monday, October 30
- Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Damrau, Flórez, Mattei) Friday November 10
- Madama Butterfly (Gallardo-Domâs, Giordani, Croft; Levine) Saturday, November 18
- Tosca (Millo, Fraccaro, Morris) Saturday, November 25
- Idomeneo (Röschmann, Deshorties, Kožená, van Rensburg; Levine) Wednesday, November 29
- La Boheme (Netrebko, Villazón) Tuesday, December 5
- Don Carlo (Racette, Borodina, Botha, Hvorostovsky, Pape, Ramey; Levine) Monday, December 11 (7:00 PM/EST)
- The First Emperor (Futral, DeYoung, Domingo, Groves; Tan Dun -- world premiere) Thursday, December 21
- I Puritani (Netrebko, Cutler) Wednesday, December 27
These broadcasts will be streamed with "support from RealNetworks®, the leading creator of digital media services." In honor of this innovation, La Cieca will host one of her legendary live chats tomorrow night during the Rigoletto streaming broadcast. Check back on parterre.com Wednesday afternoon for a link to the chat page.
Labels: damrau, first emperor, giordani, levine, met, millo, netrebko
POSTED at
2:10 PM
30 Comments:
For one brief moment there I saw the cast for Rigoletto and thought "Lily Pons is singing Gilda." I forgot Juan Pons was still singing.
So have they concluded that the Sirius experiment is a failure already? Boy, that's faster than CBS canceled "Smith."
Not being a techie but I hope they are at a decent bit rate so that we poor folks this side of the pond who can't enjoy Sirius, can get a good listen.
I just want to hear what Millo is all about.
I am having a great time with Sirius, I hope it is not a failure. It is quite addictive though and I have added alot of wonderful goodies to the collection or gotten a few others in better sound than I previously had them. For those of us who have figured out the whole thing, it is now a great experience.
Bookbinder: What about Sirius could be called a failure? The free streams are in addition to Sirius, not "instead of." I would think that the free stream will be at a less bandwidth-intensive bitrate and therefore not of the same quality as the Sirius stream. Besides, Sirius offers a 24-hour opera channel, not just one opera a week. Furthermore, so far as I can tell, the Real stream is not going to include archival broadcasts, which is a big attraction to most of the Sirius listeners.
Speaking of archives, that 1961 "Trovatore" with Price and Corelli was spectacular. What I wish is that they would play the original Milton Cross/Peter Allen descriptions of curtain calls during the archived broadcasts.
I was a child when I first heard this 1961 "Trovatore" broadcast, and I vividly remember the wild sustained roars during the curtain calls, the audience frenzy and hysteria during bows. We needed to hear that today.
It's time for us to create a wish-list of future archive broadcasts we want to hear.
I want the Corelli-Tebaldi-Colzani "Chenier," 1966. Talk about audience frenzy.
Just want to point out to Yniold that Sirius internet service IS now available outside the USA. You have to call them to register. Number is on their website.
I suppose this is "live" stream only then, and they won't allow us to view at later times? Some of us can't always listen to some of these when they air...
Is this a video stream or audio? Either way it's terrific although the Real Player does tend to take over your computer if you install all the components
I'm totally hooked on Sirius now and sure hope they don't stop it. So far have been able to tape some past performances of particular interest to me, such as the Norma, the Sonnambula, and the Manon. (Others such as the Vespri, I already had.)
As for future broadcasts, I sure would love to have the Tebaldi-Corelli-Colzani Chenier. I was at that performance. Also just about every broadcast with Sutherland and Rysanek. Think of the Rysanek's Die Frau, Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Salome, Ariadne, Fidelio, Walkuere, Tannhauser, Dutchman... And how about the Sutherland-Pavarotti Puritani ? And how about the only Callas broadcast? The early Tebaldi's? The Sills - Verrett L'Assedio? The Trovatore and Otello with Caballe? How about some Stratas broadcasts? And Crespin, Kraus, Devia. And the first Scotto Butterfly with John Alexander. Do I need to go on?
La cieca: I didn't say it was a failure but the fact that they are now going to give it away would seem to indicate that they think it might be and have decided to try something different. I think the Sirius thing has been a great success -- at least from a listener's standpoint. Just questioning why the MET is doing this. But I realize that is pretty much pointless because I am not sure that they know why they are doing anything these days. All of this is being "rolled out" in such a haphazzard way.
From the beginning the MET has said they would be having some realtime streaming from their website. to me its classic marketing - if you like this then go here to sirius and see what you can get for only $ a month.
kudos for all the broadcasts!
YAY Peter Gelb!
This morning I heard the first "glitch" on Sirius: at the end of the Trovatore broadcast, they started AGAIN from "Il balen" and went forward. Did anyone else hear that? [Then took a bathroom break at work & they had gone on to arias . . . .]
No..this was the second glitch. The first one was the omission of the last act of "The Flying Dutchman". Someone fell asleep at the switch again today.
I din´t know what happened today in the "Trovatore", but that was such a good performance ( I missed Leonora´s cabaletta "Tu vedrai che amore" in the 4th act)
I, too, remember the Met announcing from the get-go that they would be streaming some performances from their own website in addition to Sirius.
I'm going to try to remember to tune in for the Millo Tosca. I haven't heard her since her comeback Adriana at OONY a few years ago. And I'm tired of relying on second-hand accounts. ;-) I think she will have an easier time with Tosca than she did with Gioconda. Act II should be terrific.
Dear tenore di grazia,
People are going to think you and I are the same person. For obvious reasons, I too would like to hear all the early Rysanek stuff again. I don't think we will get any of the "Frau"s if William Dooley was the Messenger. People say he still refuses to sign releases.
(The Met should have stuck a tiny fine-print clause in the contracts that the Met assumes all rights to all broadcasts and can later do with them as it wishes. You want to appear on a broadcast?--you sign the contract with the waiver in it.)
The "Assedio di Corinto" broadcast was already done a couple of weeks ago, but it looks like they bring a couple of early ones back in later weeks. (The Sutherland "Sonnambula" has returned this week.) You should be able to hear "Corinto" soon.
I'm reading "Angels and Monsters" about opera diva/divo behavior. There is a bizarre mention that conductor Franco Faccio started going crazy and during one La Scala performance of "Meistersinger," he started telling people to go home, that the opera did not have a third act. So maybe the ghost of Faccio was in the control room for the "Dutchman" broadcast.
Are you sure the "Trovatore" started again at "Il balen"? For me, it started right before "Mal reggendo," which was perfect for me because there was a signal loss during it the first time, and I was able to get a good download the second time.
Good news, Rysanekfreak: There is a broadcast of a Rysanek Frau sans William Dooley, from 1978. Vern Shinall sang the Messenger.
Unfortunetly, it's also sans Christa Ludwig as Die Faberin.. This performance features Ursula Schröder-Feinen, who I've never heard of. But Bohm is in the pit and King, Berry and Dunn are in attendance. So until Dooley kicks the bucket or changes his mind, this one's the best we can do.
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Just to weigh in on the Dooley matter. Apparently he refused to sign a waiver for a release of a Met FRAU to be offered as a premium for a donation to the Met. The rumored reason for this refusal was that Dooley was on bad terms with Met management, perhaps because he thought he should have been kept on the roster longer, or offered better roles, whatever. Dooley's line of thinking was supposed to be "They screwed me over, so I'm doing them no favors."
The Sirius situation is very different: as I understand it, individual artists do not have to grant permission for the rebroadcasts. There is a kind of blanket agreement with AGMA. As such, even if Dooley didn't care to have Sirius rebroadcast FRAU, there's nothing he could do to stop it. (And this is assuming that Dooley's purported grudge extended to the current Met management.)
Baritenor: Ursula Schröder-Feinen was The Dyer's Wife in the best opera performance of my life, a 1976 SFO Frau with Rysanek, Ruth Hesse, Matti Kastu, and Walter Berry. Böhm conducted. It was my first Frau and I was totally blown away. The ovations at the end were simply staggering.
Schröder-Feinen was fantastic, but I never saw or heard her again. I've read she burned herself out pretty quick, and I believe she died a year or so ago. But in '76 she was in her prime, so hopefully she was still in good shape two years later for the broadcast you mention.
The label Orfeo recently released an excellent Schroder-Feinen CD of German rep from live performances in Munich in the 1970s: check it out.
I read somewhere (from Ed Rosen, I think) that Richard Tucker's heirs were contacted about last week's "Rigoletto" and "Hoffmann" and that Marilyn Horne was contacted about an upcoming one, and that they had to sign waivers or contracts to give clearance.
I hope, though, that's it's full freedom for all the broadcasts. We need to hear some of the great Siepi broadcasts as well.
Ursula S-F was a Met Elektra for a few performances, wasn't she? I'm pretty sure I saw one of them. Yes, she blew out all of her gaskets much too early.
I heard that legendary San Francisco "Frau" back when all of their operas were broadcast nationally. I had friends who were there opening night. They described how the entire audience rose en masse and started roaring when the balcony first caught sight of Boehm. The preliminary standing ovation he received when he first entered the pit was greater than most conductors receive at the end of a performance. If you have a chance to hear a tape of it, you might enjoy how the announcer was completely taken aback by the audience response. It had never occurred to anyone that the first Boehm ovation would be so loud and so prolonged and the announcer was almost breathless in his description of what was going on.
I guess I'll have to dig through old boxes and see if I can find the cassette of it and give it another listen. And yes...Rysanek is sensational in it.
mikefw - i think u will find that the orfeo disc has a collection of roles on it recorded live at the deutsche oper am rhein (amongst them excerpts from 'frau' with behrens as the kaiserin!). there is also a complete live elektra from munich with schröder-feinen, rysanek and varnay under böhm ... so far i havent listened to either, but the snippets i have heard sound pretty good!
schröder-feinen burnt out quickly indeed (and she did die not too long ago). she was originally cast as ortrud in the lohengrin recording under karajan - and she sang it live underhim. apparently she recorded act 1 (where ortrud does not have to sing alot) but in the gap between recording act 1 and 2 she went through a severe vocal crisis ... and had to be replaced by dunja vejsovic (spelling?!) - hence that bizarre timeframe of the recording being done between 1976-1982!!!
she is definately worth a listen to though :)
Say, rysanekfreak, if you should happen to find your tape of that SFO Frau and might be willing to duplicate it, I would love to make arrangements to get a copy from you. I promise I'm not a stalker. It would make an awesome Xmas present for my partner.
Rysanekfreak, the 61 Corelli/Price was broadcast a couple of years ago during the January hiatus. I have it on nicely chaptered CDs. Wouldn't mind trading it for the SFO Frau you have (my favourite opera).
Haha, willym, I thought the same thing! I wonder if the two singers are related at all?
Wow, A Millo Tosca. I'll have to tune in and see what all the fuss is about.
I actually have ticket for Millo's Tosca...can't wait.
tickets, that is...(someone came into my office and I had to look like I was working...Oy)
I remember Schroder-Feinen. She sang at the Met only for a handful of years but she was quite good. A true German dramatic soprano: Brunhilde, Salome, Elektra, Barak's Wife.
I also heard her do some arias in a concert at the Kennedy Center. I remember that she sang the Immolation Scene at the end.
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