After the coronavirus pandemic forced closing concert halls and opera houses this spring, online performances proliferated. The Metropolitan Opera began streaming nightly operas from its extensive video archive, and in April it hosted a Home Gala, broadcast on smartphones from singer houses around the world.
The classical and opera offerings this spring and summer have been mostly free and tremendously rewarding. But as cancellations continue into the fall, and beyond, organizations have been concerned that listeners begin to take free performances for granted.
So the Met is testing whether the public will pay for digital content with a series of recitals by some of its biggest stars; The first, on Saturday, featured tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Tickets are $ 20, about the price of Met’s Live in HD live movie broadcasts.
The effort could generate some much-needed revenue for a company that is losing up to $ 100 million in sales during the closure of its theater, which will last at least until the end of the year. But perhaps even more importantly, the recitals are meant to stimulate donations. “The fundraising ebbs and flows according to activities and events,” said Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, in a recent interview with The New York Times.
The Met’s Home Gala used charming, impromptu technology. Mr. Kaufmann’s concert, by comparison, featured professional camera work, including many, perhaps too many, dramatic close-ups and high-quality sound. (At least, after a glitch when the audio was briefly interrupted just as Mr. Kaufmann began singing Puccini’s aria “Recondita Harmonia” from “Tosca”).
The program, with pianist Helmut Deutsch, consisted of 11 arias and an Italian song performed (with no live audience) in Polling Abbey’s ornate 18th-century library near Munich, where Mr. Kaufmann lives. With a couple of exceptions, this was a collection of blockbuster numbers from “Tosca”, “Turandot”, “Roméo et Juliette”, “La Gioconda” and more. Still, Mr. Kaufmann has been perhaps the Met’s most elusive star, and it was exciting to hear from him again, even on a live stream.
The concert had an unusual feeling of intimacy, like a song recital; Mr. Kaufmann and Mr. Deutsch, a classy pianist, have been frequent partners in recordings and lieder performances. The family arias seemed to have been considered again, and Mr. Kaufmann’s singing was splendid: his voice vibrant with dark colors and warmth, his passionate phrase.
When asked, he drew on latent power, as in his heroic tale of an aria from Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier”. However, I rarely heard Bizet’s “Song of the Flower” from “Carmen” sung with such tenderness and vulnerability. Kaufmann made the culminating phrase with a rare softness among the tenors, following the pianissimo dynamic that Bizet wrote on the score. The upper B-floor was beautifully off.
To give Mr. Kaufmann some breaks on Saturday, excerpts from his Met Live HD broadcasts were shown, including scenes from Wagner’s “Die Walküre”, Massenet’s “Werther” and Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West”. There were even images of Mr. Kaufmann performing “Vesti la giubba” from “Pagliacci” at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 2015.
If all of this, and Mr. Kaufmann’s photomontages in action at the Met, pushed the promotional frills a little too obviously, it doesn’t matter. Revisiting his triumphs was a reminder of what opera fans are missing right now. The 12 concert recital series, presented by Christine Goerke, will also include performances by Renée Fleming, Anna Netrebko, Joyce DiDonato, Bryn Terfel, Angel Blue, Lise Davidsen and others.
A touchy subject arose during Mr. Gelb Times’ recent interview: While the stars participating in the series are paid, the Met’s orchestra and choir, among other employees, remain suspended. But Mr. Gelb said that recitals and other initiatives are necessary to keep the company running.
“If there is no Met to turn to,” he said, “the works of our lifeless artists will be lost.”
Mr. Kaufmann implicitly recognized him at the end of the concert, after a brave performance of “Nessun dorma”. He and Mr. Deutsch, following hygiene protocols, hit their elbows instead of shaking hands. Then, Mr. Kaufmann spoke of how “pleasant and privileged” it was to be the first singer in the series of recitals. Not all musicians have that privilege at the moment, he added. So he announced that he would donate $ 5,000 to the Met, hoping that his artists and audiences will be back together again soon.
