Early to bed
La Cieca is told that at least three productions at the Met this year will be shorn of an accustomed intermission: Simon Boccanegra, The Queen of Spades and La traviata will all be done in “two-act” versions, each with but a single interval.
In the good old days at the old Met, we girls would dash out into the left lobby at intermissions and dish about the performance: was she “flawless” or “horrendous” ….did she pee on the tenor? Did you like Maria’s “Marios”? Was Tebaldi edgy tonight? Who does Jane Rhodes think she is? What’s wrong with Leonie tonight?
That’s what intermissions are for!
Hear, hear!
No one pees on tenors these days.
(Well, not sopranos…)
Some intermissions are there because they need to be there. After Di Quella Pira I want to go out and talk about it, replay it in my mind. The same after Sempre Libera, Lucia’s Mad Scene, etc. Going on from Di Quella Pira to D’Amor, as the Met has been doing lately, diminishes the impact of the (rather long) last act.
Also lines at bathrooms, yes, including the men’s bathrooms, have gotten longer and longer. Probably a sign of the aging population. More often than not there’s still a line when the bells are colling the audience back to the auditorium. Something needs to be done about that. Portapotties outside?
Having said that, some intermissions at the Met in the last few seasons have been waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. Often the audience gets back and sits and waits. And waits.
And what happened to all the backstage wizardry that they now require so much time – and noise!! – to make scene changes? Weren’t they supposed to be able to roll a set unto the stage?
I always wonder when I hear hammering. Are they really nailing the sets into place for each act? I guess they know what they’re doing, and whatever it is, it works, but jeez.
I’ve only once seen a set failure at the Met, though it was a potentially life-threatening one. It was a Turandot in the mid nineties, and when the Ping-Pang-Pong set flies up to reveal the throne room in Act II something (it was either a lighting instrument or some kind of vase from the set) fell from the top of the proscenium, landing on the walkway. Had it fallen a few feet to one side or the other, it probably would have killed a chorister. The audience gasped and some screamed, and I couldn’t say whether the orchestra had a hiccup, but some chorister grabbed the fallen object and passed it offstage with no apparent fuss.
“Probably a sign of the aging population.”
Or a sign of a lot of cock sucking going on in the men’s room cubicles.
As someone who only attends weekday performances and who has to get up the next morning to go to work, I appreciate ANYTHING that gets me home sooner. Apparently the early curtain times (which I almost always attended when they were being offered) are no longer a possibility; therefore, I applaud any effort to cut the number of intermissions (reducing the length of the intermissions which have grown by 5-10 minutes over the past few seasons would be a boon also). In addition, I find the fewer interruptions the better: Otello and the McVicar Trovatore in 2 acts have a sweep that keeps the dramatic tension up rather than the up and down of past years when there were 3 intermissions in each. The Met has also taken to doing Nozze in 2 long acts as well–all to the good. Although I never attend Aida, I understand that some set modification was done recently to allow for removing the intermission after the Nile Scene. An intermission after the 20 minute prologue of Boccanegra is absurd.
I sometimes wonder which Metropolitan Opera some posters on this site attend. I go to the MET anywhere from 10 to 20 times a season and other than right after the end of a particularly long act I have never seen a long line at a men’s room. If one waits until about 20 minutes into the intermission, there is usually NO ONE in line at all. Often I wander from level to level and have never noticed lines at all on either the Dress Circle or Grand Tier. The ladies rooms are usually a different story but they are no concern of mine.
Something I always wondered, but never dared ask: why, indeed, are ladies rooms lines so much longer at the MET than at other opera houses, say, in Continental Europe? Is it a random experience that happens to me only? And no, it’s not the number of facilities: if anything, they are actually more numerous at the MET.
Lots of old ladies + few stalls. I drink NOTHING for a couple of hours beforehand because the lines are ridiculous.
Well, I am still stymied: the female population at Bastille – which accomodates large crowds like the MET- is not exactly formed of spring chickens! So I don’t think the average age explains it; maybe people drink less soda in Paris, who knows… Someone, someday will probably do a controlled study of this important issue.
It is not the case that the ladies’ loos are any better in Europe. In fact, if you go to the Teatro Del Maggio Musicale in Florence, you may well have to cross your legs for a very long time – and I saw Gotterdammerung there…
….not to mention the Theatre Antique in Orange – 8,000 people – eight ladies stalls. Those Romans had good bladder control.
Recent studies prove that 80% of women in Europe don’t wear panties.
It’s much faster if one runs to the Avery Fisher Hall bathroom and back, I find.
Have to agree with you, Hippolyte. I don’t live in Manhattan and the trains home don’t run very frequently at night. Getting out at 11:00 I don’t mind, but 11:30 for a relatively short opera like Butterfly or Tosca is a chore.
I think they reduced Queen of Spades to one intermission partway through the last run in Fall 2008. I’m pretty sure there was only one intermission when I saw it.
Well I can’t comment on the ladies’s room situation at Bastille, but the ones at the Met accommodate very few at a time, aside from the one downstairs (I think, it’s been awhile).
Pardon my unforgivable grammatical error – truly, I meant “ladies’”
I always thought opera was about the musical vision of the composer and not about the bladder sizes or blood sugar levels of the audience.
Well, ok, I guess he who pays the piper gets to call the tune … and the intervals between the tunes.
In a given run of a particular opera, mightn’t it be feasible to stage some performances (weeknights?) with minimal intermissions, and others with more extended breaks (opening nights, weekends?). Then everyone can choose their subscription night to best match their real-life constraints and physical abilities.
I think there are a couple ways to reduce the running times of the operas without changing the number of intermissions.
First, I would suggest a new company policy that new productions have to be designed in such a way that there are no “stage waits” while sets are changed between scenes of an act. These feel old-fashioned to me, and they sap energy out of the evening. You sit in the dark for almost five minutes and listen to stuff rolling around behind the curtain. Broadway shows never make you wait; the sets are designed to make transitions seamless, and the Met certainly has the facilities to make this possible.
My other suggestion to save time would be to do away with “tab calls,” the singer curtain calls at the ends of the earlier acts. These are becoming less frequent, thankfully. They also feel old-fashioned and sometimes reduce the enthusiasm of the applause at the end of the opera. I don’t like seeing the singers out of character until the end of the evening, which is the only time there should be a curtain call, IMHO.
Excellent suggestions. “Tab calls” (who knew that’s what they were called?) might make sense for roles that appear only in the early acts (Parpignol, Genevieve, Siegmund), but then again if you can’t be bothered to wait another hour or so for the curtain calls, then… don’t.
And should anyone point out that some operas (especially Wagner) have been getting longer and longer under Levine’s baton? My understanding was always that the Met has to start paying overtime to the orchestra and crew (except those who were on overnight shifts anyway) if the opera runs past midnight, which is why long operas were always scheduled (with early curtains) to end at 11:50 or so. As the Levine tempi slowed the operas typically ran beyond the witching hour.
NB: I am not advocating second-guessing any conductor’s tempi for the purpose of getting the curtain down in time (whatever my opinion of some of Levine’s ponderous pacing).
Will there be an intermission to Capriccio??
There has to be an intermission after she calls for coffee and choclate in Capriccio. There is ac ostume change for Renee rigth after that. I am all about expediency, but some intermissions are necessary. PBS in NYC has played all of the theatre simulcasts over the course of the summer. What I find particulary annoying (and I am sure the singers feel the same way) are those interviews where they ambush the singer just coming off stage and probably just wanting to go their dressing room. It ruins the magic of what has just been seen on stage.
“There has to be an intermission after she calls for coffee and choclate in Capriccio. There is a costume change for Renee rigth after that.”
Just curious, how do you know that the costume change is so elaborate that there must be an intermission? Fleming has not done this production before. If other productions of Capriccio can manage without an intermission, why shouldn’t this one? It’s a unit set for the whole evening.
Arianna. I was kind of joking. But it will be the perfect opportunity to compare her to Kiri (the production was mounted for her) and do the schmoozy intermission thing. If ever there was an opera made for intermission schmooze this one is it.
My preference is for intermission, even when it means getting home an hour or so later (I commute to a borough, one hour away from the Met on a normal night, 45 minutes in the daytime). I live in a small apartment, and enjoy very much spending time in pleasant public spaces such as the Met. I talk with acquaintances, and often enough with complete strangers as is my nature (democracy depends on communication with fellow citizens), and I feel a sense of community with other lovers of this art. In addition, I am one of those who stops to smell the roses. In a larger sense, we are all going to Valhalla at some point, and I for one am in no particular hurry to get there. It is the journey, not the destination, which concerns me.
The truly disturbing trend at the Met, as I see it, is the practice of having pauses where there used to be intermissions. The lights come partly up, no one who leaves at this point would be re-admitted to the auditorium, and the audience captive sits listening to crafts persons securing the next set behind the curtain. The longest pause in recent years was in Stiffellio. The entire audience could have left and returned in the interval, with time to spare. I believe a similar period of stasis obtained in Simon Boccanegra. I don’t know if it was coincidence that both were traditional productions by Giancarlo Del Monaco , or what that will do to my experience of Fanciulla this season. Management which miscasts the soprano lead, and settles for an inadequate Dick, should beware of trying my patience with too-long intermissions, and endless pauses.
Please no tedious jokes about inadequate dicks and leaden sopranos.
Fortunately, Fanciulla is only one scene per act, though I suppose it is sometimes done in Europe with the second and third acts “together” — in which case there would be some wait to get the forest set up.
The Boccanegra is the most egregious for long set changes, though the Stiffelio, with its 7 minute change to set up a 5 minute final scene, is pretty horrible.
I like intermissions. After all, Operas are written with a break between acts in mind so that the audience can savor what they just heard, the singers and orchestra can relax a bit, etc.
I want a break after Di Quella Pira and after that fabulous ensemble that ends act 1 of Macbeth and so many other fabulous act ending finales.
Eliminating the intermissions makes for Otellodammerung and Romeo et Julietsifal.
Otellodammerung: now there’s an opera I’d pay to see:
“As Otello squeezes the life out of Brunnhilde, Emilia rushes in and admits that it was she who stole the Rheingold. When Iago reports that Hagen is dead Otello stabs himself in the back with a spear, and as he dies, singing “Noch einmal ein Ring” fire engulfs the stage. Curtain.”
Your point about finales is well taken—if an ensemble was written to ring down the curtain, shouldn’t the curtain, in fact, come down? Galloping straight into the next act ruins the effect.
But if those single intervals are 45 minutes or an hour long, it doesn’t make the evening any shorter, does it?
The intervals last year were so long that I’m not sure you’ll get to bed any earlier with one less —