The Metropolitan Opera, Live in PG-13
Condescending to opera lovers across America — and cheating both Bartlett Sher and Squirrel out of the simple joys of partial nudity — the Met has decided to censor the December 19th High Def broadcast of Les Contes d’Hoffmann!
It should be noted that the poitrines in question are already censored — with tasteful little pasties, yet — and so it’s not even whole boobs we’re talking about.
Apparently concerned that this production might be too stimulating to some viewers in the development of their appreciation of the art form, the House of Gelb will, presumably, pan away from the chestical areas of the supernumeraries and dancers in Acts One and Act Three, training cameras instead on— what?— Joseph Calleja’s drooling, stupefied stare?
Yes it did. And at least in the theater I went, there was no need for 911 or oxygen tanks (at least not above and beyond what already was)
I have to laugh at the prudery in some so called
‘progressive’ countries. In Australia if you turn on the TV….ads for condoms, female sanitary products,and as the night gets late at 9.30 PM films classified (unrated in the U.S)…..plus ads for what are ’sex’ dating services and erection problems!
Before a TV show starts, a censorship rating and print up of sex scenes, violence, drug use …whatever…..comes on screen…..make your choice! Go to the opera…Salome with explicit sex orgy scenes with total nudity……Il Trovatore …..full male nudity……
And the MET wants to cover up some cow udders for ‘wholesome HD family viewing at the local theatre’
These HD telecats should be censorship rated as ‘festival screenings’….nrated.
It is strange the ‘unmoticed slips that happen in censorship’. Take the Nureyuv/ Fonteyn verson of the ballet Romeo & Juliet. Ho many children have watched this with contented addmiring parents also watching.
In the Tomb scene, Juliet is believed dead by Romeo..yet he drags her off the marble pier unto the floor. then on top of her lengthwise, then rolls around the floor with her. If that does not suggest….a mad Romeo committing necrophilia…I do not know what does. Yet grandma and the kids will be thinking …’Oh, poor Romeo he is so distraught, he cannot let Juliet go, now that he thinks she’s dead’!
‘The Eye of the Beholder’……….what an insidious load term.
Perhaps Gelb does not want a scandal, from those, he has to ‘butter up’.
Some of those prudish Met benefactors , usually feeling uncomfortably randy one assumes – spying these considered ‘risque’ presentations from a Box through a Ninette (or strong binoculars!).It might even cause more visits of the men to relieve themselves elsewhere!
Those were some of the greatest balloons of our lives. But that wonderful video is not the MET, it’s San Francisco Opera with Horne and Caballe being conducted by Kurt Herbert Adler.
But we don’t know if Bartlett Scher agreed to the censoring of his work, but he will go along with it so that he will be rehired by the Met.
In almost every case the censorship issue is a situation in which one or more people complained and someone in charge decided to make the decision to cater to those people. Often a librarian simply self censors, “Oh, no! This books is too controversial, so I better not put it on the shelves or buy it!” I hate that.
In almost all library censorship issues there is never a government entity causing it. It is one person deciding to solve the problem and stop the brouhaha by taking the book off the shelf. It is seldom a governmental agency. But the repercussions are that this type of behavior chips away at what our founding fathers wanted in this country, and Peter Gelb is not helping when he chooses to do this.
This is also a controversy among librarians. When we select books and videos for our libraries, our selection process keeps other things out of the library. In some instances it is a type of censorship. A right leaning librarian (there actually are some, believe it or not) might avoid any fiction books with gay characters during the selection process. That is a type of self imposed censorship, and it isn’t really the right thing to do. Same with the cameramen selecting to keep the breasts off camera.
The person above is right. The Met can do as it sees fit, but its decisions still impact the arts and has a ripple effect in the whole censorship debate. I think it is terrible of Gelb to make these types of decisions for everyone involved (deciding what the audience should or should not see, deciding what to show of the director’s product, etc). If breasts are no good for the HD transmissions, why does he allow them on the stage period? People are seeing them on the stage. Why is that okay? I have seen children in the Met’s theatre, not just the HD transmissions. The logic doesn’t make any sense, and as someone pointed out we saw a breast during the Tosca HD transmission.
I hate to see people worry about what kind of scandal MIGHT happen, so they think they better avoid it by self censoring. In many cases, if they just left it alone nothing bad would have happened. It boils down to cowardice, plain and simple.
I have read books removed from a display using a megaphone in front of the county building to show that they are not smut and have literary value. I got into a lot of trouble at work, so I have battle scars from standing up against censorship, so when I see a coward like Gelb decide to hide the breasts it makes me angry. People like this make it 20 times harder for people like me when we are fighting problems in the community of this sort.
Bart, you’re not alone in your feelings and I commend you for voicing your concerns to the Met. Some people might be upset by seeing naked breasts in opera, but many of us are upset by the sense of self-censorship. The Met should understand that we buy tickets, too.
It is not Alto or Squirrel, but Gelb, who is the fucking genius in this little caper. He thinks up shit like this like Homer thinks of having a donut.
The NYCO had an ORFEO, of course, in which a couple of dozen people were completely nude in bright light for an extended period. So it’s not the live New York audiences that are the excuse for these measures. And — vide supra — even this one is all about getting publicity for the Met and its “venturesome” offerings.
It is, I repeat, brilliant.
Quanto Painy Fakor,
Clarification correct, but of course the Met presented those two ladies many times for our glorious enjoyment.
Someone somewhere also said the Met is not always the center of the Universe. Indeed that is very true. That year of the balloons in the park, 1980, the center of the Universe was in the south of France, in Aix-en-Provence, when those two ladies sang Semiramide.
I am reminded of a marionette show called Les Poupées de Paris which was around in the 1960s It was a french revue modeled after the Casino de Paris and Folies Bergere. And some of the puppets were topless in the style of French showgirls.
A friend of mine was a puppeteer with the show and recalls that for matinees in some cities it was necessary to “cover up” – she said one of the strangest things she’s ever done was to spend the mornsing putting pasties on puppets!!!!! But the morals of upstanding places like San Francisco were left unsullied by topless marionettes.
Can they do an *aural* cover-up of Rosalind Plowright’s vocally topless in HANSEL AND GRETEL? (Of course, Fiend and Billingsgate wisely saw that NO ONE in North America could POSSIBLY have sung Gertrud…)
Harsh, but witty, Krunoslav.
The possibility/potential for vocal “fixes” on HD broadcasts has crossed my mind, particularly with the frequency of vocal problems and casting changes at the Met. I haven’t been given any true evidence that this may occur, but I fear it may only be a matter of time.
Does anyone know how much of a delay there is in the “live” HD broadcast? Is there time enough to do a real-time fix?
There is quite a time difference in the audio broadcast and internet broadcast on the local radio station here where I live. So, perhaps it is possible. So much for “real”
Horne before she was a blonde. And Caballé as one of that minority of divas who will go to the grave with the same hair-color she was born with.
Thanks to Grecian Formula and a touch of Nice & Easy Midnight Black.
I’m with Bart on this one. If Gelb agrees with Sher that nudity is appropriate for HOFFMANN, then it should be considered part of the show, and included in the HD telecast. Why is the “live” audience more able to process such a thing than the simulcast audience? In SALOME, nothing else of importance was happening at the moment Mattila revealed “all”, and yet the t.v. audience didn’t see that.
It would be easy enough to post a sign, or include a note with the tickets that said, “this performance features less than a minute of partial nudity”.
And while we’re at it, why did Parterre put black bars over the relevant areas? More censorship?
For those of you who have seen Hoffmann? How long were the showgirls on display for? They’re onstage for a while, right?
The Last time something was censored, in SALOME, it was done very seamlessly: The camera just cut away from the “final unveiling” to see Herod with a look of extascy on his face. There was no question as to what was going on, and the suggestion was probably more powerful than the actuality. But how are they going to censure a good few minutes of coverage…or rather uncoverage?
They’re onstage for quite a bit…Mostly they are marginal, and move across the stage here, scuttle in a gaggle there. Sometimes certain characters are surrounded by them, however.
The big part where they’ll be hard to censor is the Barcarolle, where they lay prostrate all around Giulettia. A group of them also do a choreographed dance during the Barcarolle. I’m wondering if the MET is scared of close-up camel toe, as they do spread-eagles, if not galore, then certainly enough that it’s a real threat.
But, to me, that was the most interesting part of the staging in this duet, and I don’t know what else they’ll focus on. I think the jiggling breastesses will be hard for the camera to ignore logistically.
Well I can actually understand why the MET would be concerned considering the HD tapings are rebroadcast on public television.
And re: parterre and black censorship bars…two possibilities:
1. The picture is already censored like that.
2. It was done ironically.
Either way, it fits the PG-13 theme of the post and is entirely appropriate.
being middle aged and womanly, I am not the least bit offended.
Maybe it will be restaged for the HD transmission, so they are able to leave them out easily. Who knows? But then it will feel like we aren’t really seeing the new production. To me the point of the HD transmissions is that those of us who aren’t in NY to see it in the house can go to the HD transmissions and see the production that way. If the HD productions are re-staged slightly for reasons like this (although maybe it won’t be), then we aren’t really seeing the actual production the way it is meant to be staged. Maybe if they restage it, it will be minimal.
But I am hoping some others write to the Met and complain that we don’t want the HD transmissions censored like this. If they felt it was appropriate for the stage of the Met, why isn’t it appropriate for the HD transmission? PBS can play it late at night if they are concerned. But a child seeing breasts is no big deal, in my opinion. PBS and the Met should not be concerned. I doubt this type of thing would concern Europeans. They grow up with nude sculptures in churches and nudity on their beaches, and I believe there is a lower incident of rapes and other sex crimes. I could be wrong. I think hiding sexuality and the nude body actually creates more perversion than showing it.
Perhaps the MET is so god-fearing that the children watching might not know what nipples and breasts are…..and they the, might be frightened by what appears ’so strange’. Myself, I was a more progressive kid. I remember once sleeping and sharing a room at age 6 -with what, I later in life realized -was a young sailor (and gay!). There were two grown up girls in the house and upon seeing a pair of full size female rubber ‘falsies’ on the bedroom cabinet, thought they belonged to the girls. I learned years later they belonged to their cousin -the sailor . Still at the time, so ‘corrupted’ yet innocent, I had fun playing with them as toys ..by sticking pins in their nipples expecting them to burst like balloons!
Looking back, I only resent the fact that the great disparity in years between us : prevented me of a knowing favorable opportunity for me, to move on that young sailor. What sad regrets we have!!
I remember hearing that Mattila may have been part of the decision to pull the camera away during her “full monty” moment, with the reasoning that she was fine with being nude for the theatre audience but not for the world-wide broadcast audience (and the ensuing PBS broadcast).
Funny I was watching public free to air TV a few hours ago and it had on, Dante’s Cove. Yes,totally uncensored with a large section of its content depicting things like men in the raw, groping and ‘doing it’ with close angle camera shots on beds or in the shower etc. Is the MET and U.S film censorship actually still back in the 1940’s la-la days of sausage-curled Shirley Temple? L.O.L
There is also a strange twisted paradox if one remembers ‘little Shirley’ doing her famous “Good Ship Lollypop’ number clip : back in one of her films. That was 40’s America. A time when ‘children were seen and not heard’. A time when children behaved and ‘did not answer back’
Yet there she is, in the film : going up and down a plane aisle like a teasing vamp being admired , singing away. The lyrics are directed at, and for- what are the adults -the passengers. There she is, ‘correcting’ them on their ways. Wagging her finger at adults – performing like some saucy ‘infant – femme fatale’. For the period : a performance , that one expected : more usually out of ‘one of those saloon gals in some Western bar crooning a song’ And we all knew what the saloon gals did ,’upstairs’, don’t we?.
What a underlying message to give, when you juxtapose these two points . For the period : the flaunting child is ’seen / noticed and certainly demands to be heard , but also being overlooked ‘as being brazen’ Speaking back to adults : she becomes ‘the appealing cheeky tart, (in miniature) ‘ so to speak. What that film scene in toto – throws up…..’is rather sick and uncomfortable’ when one considers the possible implications suggested , underpinning that scene. Such ‘things’ were of course unknown to those nicely-nice people of that 40’s period. Nearly 70 years later the MET we hear, is now worried about …’protecting and saving family values’??? Giddy up Gelb, the horse bolted out of the gate decades ago!