by Keith Clarke
In ancient times, when the Metropolitan Opera first started beaming into movie theaters, I remember reading one man’s comparison between the real live experience at the opera house and the screened version. For him, having Anna Netrebko in glorious close-up won hands down against seeing her from 100 yards back in the opera house. Last night I got my chance to agree with the verdict, when English National Opera’s Lucrezia Borgia became the world’s first live 3D opera.
This is the production where Movie director Mike Figgis takes us straight from the wonder of movie to a live stage production where the characters stand like lumps of wood and sing, so the idea of sitting through it all again was not the biggest thrill of the week. But lo and behold, could this really be the same production? With the wonder of close-up and slick direction, we were dealt an entirely different experience. You could see how these guys on stage were straining every sinew to put on a performance. And of the characters didn’t move, the cameras did.
The movie house version did not have ENO’s surtitles, but the amazing thing was that they were not needed. With everyone close-miked, every word rang out gloriously, and always came from the right part of the screen. Sometimes parts of the orchestra seemed to have moved to a side aisle—trying to find the bar, maybe—but the sound of the singers was bang on target.
The 3D was impressive, and if I had known that the Borgias were going to be coming quite so close I’d have lined up a few more drinks. But it was not the clincher. It was the imaginative transformation of a live performance from stage to screen that really won the evening. Let’s have more.
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Venue for this Lucrezia was Westfield in west London, heralded as Europe’s largest urban shopping mall. In US terms, it would probably be considered tiny, but for some arts journalists lured through its doors for the first time by the Lucrezia invitation, it was a bit of a surprise to discover that the cinema was what felt like a five-mile hike from the entrance. I am no Westfield virgin, as the center is on my doorstep and my kids seem to live there, but it was amusing to see first-time callers clearly in need of rescue dogs carrying brandy as they made their way to the multi-screen.