Only in New York, Kids
"At High School of Enterprise, Business and Technology on Grand Street Campus in Brooklyn, the show is sold out at nearly 1000 tickets. The school didn’t spare any effort in terms of marketing: there’s a huge color banner for 'Live in HD' on the side of the building, facing Bushwick Avenue, with a picture of Anna Netrebko, who is singing Juliette, standing 20 feet tall. The school kids also put up posters in local eating establishments, including Grand Street Grill, their local bodega, and The Great Wall Chinese restaurant."
From metopera.org.
Labels: met, netrebko, peter gelb is a fucking genius, telecast
POSTED at
4:57 PM
15 Comments:
I posted this on another thread, but it makes more sense in this one:
Anyone else get the feeling that Gelb wants to run a Hollywood studio?
Knowledge of the LA scene from his days at Sony Classical - check
Getting tight with movie theater operators - check
Setting up On Demand agreements with the cable companies - check
Mass media packaging of HIS STARS - check
Wooing film directors to opera - check
Putting himself front and center in the press - check
His skills as a marketer are more than impressive, but I have a feeling some of this is self-promotion, and not just promotion of the Met. It'll be interesting to see if he makes himself a bigger part of the story as time goes on.
Not blaming him if that's what he wants - just an observation.
That speculation aside, I keep wondering what's next? The first year and a half has been dramatically successful, and the Met is redefining itself as the world's very first cultural/media property. That is a truly revolutionary thing.
But is he setting the bar so high for himself - with results that are so risen-from-the-dead spectacular - that even maintaining this current level turns out to be the biggest challenge he'll face?
And in the end, does it really matter?
remember, no one is questioning him.
Not the Times, which is in "the family"
Not the press at all, or the public.
He "bloated" numbers at Sony.
He maybe moving money from one fund to another to make some of this look so successful.
There is no way to know anything he says is true.
It all looks successful. AND the Met is certainly prettier these days, with moderate success being the key word.
The biggest success so far?
Lucia with Dessay.
AND La Scala and LA are doing operas in theaters too. So it makes opera miniature. at least enough for the movie screen.
and little voices can assume large roles because it is all miked in movie theaters.
Poor opera.
knot: how exactly do you define the Lucia as "biggest success so far?"
And I would be interested to hear what "bloated" means in this context.
Exactly, La Cieca...I would like to know too. Peter Gelb seems to be doing some good things for the Met. I am not in the know, so I can't be totally sure. But the posts above seem mean for the sake of being mean. NO!!!! WE DO NOT GET THE FEELING THAT GELB WANTS TO RUN A HOLLYWOOD STUDIO!!!! I hate people who want to hear themselves talk at all costs.
La Cieca
He, she or it...defines Lucia as "the biggest success so far" based on his/her/its uncompromising opera attendance. The last time he/she/it made such a statement was during Gluck's reformation of opera. So as you see it a long opera going career.
I think it's exciting.
Bottom line: The Mr. and Mrs. Gottrocks who have a box on Parterre level and the Mr. and Mrs. Intheflush who subscribe and donate every year are dying off and retiring from their opera-going days. Fact of life. But in wooing new audiences, administrators are presented with what has become only recently a unique challenge: enticing audiences whose parents may not have exposed them to opera, or who are otherwise closed off to the art form. Gelb is reaching them on their territory in some innovative and astute ways. I'm intrigued to see how this plays out in the longer run.
http://cultureonthecheap.wordpress.com
You can say anything you want about Broadway Pete- self-promotion and all. He's a genius and an innovator, who will go down the line as the man who brought the most important change in the opera world since the first aria was recorded on a cylinder. Romeo et Juliette was scheduled to be performed- over a period of four months- 11 times at the Met, with potential ticket sale of 44 thousand, provided that all performances were sold out-and they were. Well, 97 thousand tickets were sold for a single live telecast of R & J at the movies, not counting the encore of the following day, and the future PPV on TV. These are staggering numbers and surpass by tens of thousands all tickets sold in a single night by all the major opera houses around the world. If the average age of the Met's season ticket holder is sixty or older, opera is going downhill fast, and Gelb tries to halt the fall. Gelb strted a revolution which is going to affect the entire industy, like DVD and CD sales. I preordered Met's I Puritani telecast in November, and now delivery has been moved to the end of January. I'm sure Amazon.com has been flooded with orders. The HD telecasts are miked, some complain So what! We can still see opera in the house, whenever we can. I saw R & J at the Met, and enjoyed the naturalness of the voice and being physically present. On the other hand, a telecast gives theatricality that you miss, no matter how close you're seated. And overhead shots, like the ones over the suspended bed, are thrilling. And what about the masses who have never set foot at the Met or any other opera house? Gelb is the "Grinch" who saved opera! Even the snooty La Scala is coming aboard!
If you are all for leading people to SEE opera on a movie screen and HOPE they come to the opera, at these prices, Gelb is your guy. The press alone has been a plus for this launch. Volpe period the TIMES never gave the opera a break. Now it is placed freely and a lot. That also helps .
Seeing an opera on a movie screen with no real sense of how big or small the voices are is leading down a very dangerous path.
asking questions isn't a federal offense. some in here take it as such. How do we know what is said about box office and sell outs are true? This is a question asked on other blogs, why not here?
Last Saturday at the R & J, I was seated in Row P when I suddenly thought I was seeing things.
It looked as though a man with a camera appeared at the back of the stage during the balcony scene. But no! There he was again -- and reappearing for the bed scene as well.
Is this not the crossing of a *very* significant line? It is not enough that the room was littered with cameras and we had little R2D2 shuttling back and forth along the apron constantly with its camera, but now (with, I'm afraid, a big "screw you" to the paying -- to put it mildly -- audience in the theater) we can have camera persons entering into the mis en scène?
I don't want to imply that we should be hysterical about this, but is it not a legitimate reason for concern that this line has been crossed? It would once have seemed inconceivable that such a thing could occur at the Met.
Simmer down Renee - just doing some thinking out loud. Most visionaries think many steps ahead of the rest of us, so what's the harm in the having some fun speculating?
Sorry to have made you resort to typing in all caps.
Volpe period the TIMES never gave the opera a break
During the Volpe period, the Met was actively hostile to the press. For example, when there was a cast change, there would be no press release. In fact, if you telephoned the press office, they would refuse to tell you if there had been a cast change -- even for a performance the same day. No one at the Met was willing to speak on the record about anything: at most, you could hope that Volpe would issue a printed release with a couple of quotes. He certainly wouldn't entertain questions, and the head press person's job was to say "no comment" over and over again.
Gelb has actively courted the media, not just the TIMES, and in return they (we) are perhaps cutting him a few breaks to begin with in response to what is seen as the Met's trying at least to act in good faith instead of stonewalling and outright lying.
Getting back to the posting about the high school in Bushwick...I saw the kids from this school at a performance of Rigoletto last year - they were sitting in balcony boxes, hanging over the sides of the boxes to see, dressed to the teeth and loving every minute. This is not a testament to Mr. Gelb whom I admire but a testament to the exceptional music department and principals in this school which is in a very tough part of Brooklyn - I know them and I am in awe of them.
From everything I've read the simulcasts are not attracting a younger audience, except for the screenings for school groups. They seem to be pulling in the same older crowd who attend the live performances. It will be interesting to see if the audience for Hansel and Gretel is younger.
I wonder if anyone has really scientifically surveyed who attends the telecasts. I have yet to see any kind of follow up from the Met after the broadcasts.
I went to all of them last spring (Los Angeles)and was always amazed to see the diversity in the crowd. At the Puritani (sold out), I sat next to a guy who said it was his first opera ever (he was maybe 40) and he came because he was curious to see what all the fuss was. I will add, he said at intermission that he thought it was a lot of fun; he didn't realize that opera was "easier to enjoy" that he had expected, the subtitles helped, and he wondered if John Relyea always sang out of the side of his mouth (LOL).
I took a friend to see the R&J this past weekend, and he loved it. It helped for him that he already knew the story and so, as he said it, he could enjoy the characters and the story telling and the music; none of the music was familiar to him. He loved "the girl" (Netrebko) and at the final scene he was tearing up and misty-eyed, and applauding. And as he said it, for $20 he had the best seat in the house - aerial shots, backstage tours, and so on. Is he ready for a live performance in the house? I don't know, but he asked how often do they do these, and what would be another good one to see? (Probably not Tristan, but maybe Peter Grimes or Fille or Boheme.)
No, it's not at all like seeing it live in the house, but it's still a darn good experience, a terrific value for your entertainment dollars, and it removes the hoity-toity stigma of opera. Cheers and more cheers, I say.
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