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1. Webcast technology has been refined enormously in the barely two years since the pioneering (and frustrating) effort at streaming a performance of Il Sant’Alessio. The embeddable (!) player didn’t skip once that I could see, and the sound was consistent. Neither, obviously, was exactly HD quality, but the experience felt quite seamless.

2. The “chasing” format is a good idea that deserves to be emulated. As La Cieca understands it, the webcast began an hour after the start of the actual performance, then omitted most of the intermissions, finishing with the performance more or less in real time. The savings in resources and to the audience: nearly an hour of filler.

3. In general, the filming was done using simple camera angles and fairly sedate cross-cutting. This format put more emphasis on the performers’ movement (or, in the case of the remarkable Jonas Kaufmann, stillness) and even on a small computer screen offered some sense of being in the same theater as the performance. (The shots from the flies, as if from the POV of the Citizen Kane stagehands, were an exception to this tendency, and La Cieca thinks also that we don’t need to see into the wings as performers prepare to make their entrances. What if Kaufmann needed to hawk up a loogie just prior to taking the stage? Not that anyone so dreamy would ordinarily do such a thing, but La Cieca thinks it’s nice for artists to have options.)

All three of these observations, La Cieca thinks, could apply to the Met’s already very successful video program. In particular, the thrilling experience of a live transmission of an opening night performance (already beamed into the Plaza and Times Square) would be redoubled by making it available via a webcast, adding hundreds of thousands of viewers to the already high-profile event. (This and other live events shared via webcast could, it seems to me, be served through the MetPlayer technology, since obviously a buck has to be made here.)

Furthermore, the Met might consider “chasing” the Saturday afternoon HDs (beginning the movie experience at 2:00 pm instead of the usual 1:00), which would have the added benefit of minimizing those inane backstage interviews.

As for the minimalist camera work, La Cieca has her doubts whether such a thing is the cards for the Met, invested as they are in razzle-dazzle. But it would be lovely if, eventually, there were offered the choice of a less frenetic edit of a telecast for those of us who prefer to see the singers’ and stage director’s vision of the work, not the film director’s.

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