It was the most anticipated Metropolitan Live in HD broadcast of the year: the huge Lohengrin of Wagner, associating François Girard with the direction and Yannick Nézet-Séguin with the musical direction, was massacred with the cinema by unworthy technical scoria.
Nothing will have been spared Quebec, and probably Canadian, spectators, who stoically endured the unbearable in Cineplex theaters on Saturday: sound interruptions (dropouts) very regular, disappearance of the subtitles at the end of IIe act, all culminating at worst in Act III with, in addition, dropoutsimage freezes.
We can incriminate the signal sent by the Met, or a question of “solar transits” which can affect the signal of the satellite. On leaving the cinema, a member of staff admitted to us, however, that the reception system had been overhauled during the week and had problems since. The thing is, it seems to be a Canadian problem, with fans in the US reporting no such incidents and Europeans having only had the fleeting, one-time problem with subtitles. At the time these lines were written, The duty had still not received a response to his request for an explanation from Cineplex’s communications department.
Wagnerian readability
That being said, the Lohengrin seen by François Girard is worthy of his other Wagnerian shows and endowed with a very great coherence with respect to Parsifal (it will be recalled that, even if the opera was composed previously, the character of Lohengrin is the son of Parsifal). It is in an indeterminate universe (time and space), integrated into a cosmos, but visibly ravaged, that the forces of good and evil clash.
The basis for the success of this Lohengrin is to succeed in integrating the omnipresent chorus into the narrative symbolism. The opposing forces are red and white. The challenge is the world (dark, more or less bathed in light), with the ecological message of Parsifal. Through the recurrence of the color green, Girard and his partners in the design of the show remind us that beyond moral issues, it is the future of the Earth that is at stake. And we see from the opening that a planet too, it can explode if “red” wins.
It is very interesting to see how the great Quebec directors (Lepage, Girard) seek to make Wagner above all readable, with modern means and fine technical tricks (video for Lepage, sophisticated costumes designed by Tim Yip here) . And even if François Girard avoids the cart pulled by a swan, the appearance of Lohengrin is striking with a large wing that gradually takes shape in the sky.
The hope for renewal is embodied by this being dressed in a white shirt, while everyone is wearing heavy capes. But it is the lack of faith that will make him leave these places. Girard had “dechristianized” Parsifal. We come out of Lohengrin even more troubled. In what do we still have faith and what guides us, to go where?
Great board
Yannick Nézet-Séguin is very comfortable in this very lyrical Wagner (in the sense of the song, the sentences, the breath) and based, too, on a choral material that he likes to knead (excellent choir). The villainous pair are impeccably played by Evgeny Nikitin and Christine Goerke, who seem to be having a blast playing an evil hook-fingered witch Ortrud. Günther Groissböck, the king, has the right scale, but his highs are tight at Ier act, no doubt because it is noon and a voice is not at its maximum at that time.
What will become of cinema performances after a crucial meeting thus scuttled, even as the Met seeks to regain its clientele lost during the pandemic?
Tamara Wilson is an excellent Elsa with, for what it seems in the cinema, the magnitude of the role. She goes very well from candor to doubt. In Lohengrin, Piotr Beczala is not the big one Heldentenor as we have known, but approaches the role with elegant ease and a kind of detached benevolence.
What will become of cinema performances after a crucial appointment thus scuttled, even as the Met seeks to regain its clientele lost during the pandemic while protecting tooth and nail, some would say excessively, its broadcast partner by deliberately limiting the development of its Live at Home initiative?