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?
Lindoro A,
The exposed breast in Tosca lasted a few nanoseconds and was quickly covered as if it were a wardrobe mulfunction! No flip-flopping, dancing mammary glands. Once in a Greek upscale beach, I saw a topless, well-endowed young woman playing tennis. This was the most hilarious, asexual thing- and that from a straight guy-I witnessed in my entire life.
I loved it when the Met had these balloons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0HfzdHTsIo&feature=related
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.
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.
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.
There is, indeed, a record? amount of nudity at the Met this season. Besides Hoffmann, I was surprised to see full frontal in House of the Dead this afternoon (not listed for HD, quelle surprise). Completely unerotic — if anything, had the opposite effect — but clearly the Met has come a long way since JP Morgan’s daughter banished my namesake opera…
I emailed the Met to complain about Peter Gelb’s censoring. As a librarian I have fought against censorship personally, and whenever someone in a leadership position censors before there is even a problem, that makes it harder on the rest of us who are trying to defend art (a book or dvd, for example) that belongs on the shelves of libraries. Each time someone in a leadership position chooses to censor a work or remove something it emboldens book burners to complain more and loudly causing a domino effect of more and more censorship. I encourage everyone reading this site to email and voice your complaint about how Gelb has censored the Salome HD transmission in the past and now this upcoming Tales of Hoffman transmission. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the human body, and he is teaching girls that they should be ashamed of their bodies. I don’t like that.
Bart, the kinds of censorship you’re referring to are not the same. One is a censorship imposed from an outside source, one is self-imposed (the Hoffmann case). It’s not like the government swooped in and said “no boobs.” The Met made its own decision about its own product. It has that right. It’s not your jurisdiction to defend artistic freedom when it’s the artist who is making the decision about his own work.
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.
La Cieca has learned that in lieu of the pasties, the HD telecast will include an extra musical number, Giulietta’s Gambling Song. Your doyenne has obtained this brief clip from an early camera rehearsal.
http://tubedubber.com/#UFrrcQislbw:S4WJ4hxrM-0:0:100:0:14:false
I’m in full agreement on the censorship issue.
However, there’s the other problem with HD transmissions. The camera selects what you look at – and even in non-controversial productions it can be irritating after having seen a production “in person” to discover that in the HD performance the camera( man) has decided what you see. Someone should have thought this through before getting egg on their faces.
I agree with this and I think it would be very nice if there were an alternate, “primitive” version of the HD transmissions resembling what you see if you arrive late and have to watch the first act on the (now) wide screen in List Hall: a single uninterrupted HD shot of the full stage width – but on a real movie theater’s much larger screen.
The DVD technology already exits to select “alternate angles” on certain films, so it’s only a matter of time surely before opera discs include several different visual edits for varying tastes.
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.
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!
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”
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?
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.