Tim Cornwell: Novel ways of bringing opera to the masses

THE opera crowd in Edinburgh last Saturday night were settling in for a four-hour production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, complete with sandwiches in silver foil, and thermos flasks, for the interval.

The setting was a main screen at the Cameo Cinema, for a live broadcast from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Every seat was full. Live high-definition cinema broadcasts of opera in Scotland are no longer new, but they evidently have quite a following, and, as a first-timer, I loved every minute of it.

Another recent experience of opera was very different: a light-weight taster show of the Barber of Seville in The Scotsman canteen, by a couple of musicians and a singer doing some of its hit arias, with a fairly childish synopsis to link them. It was part of Scottish Opera’s “A Little Bit Of…” promotion, where the company delivers a free 20-minute version of their current show in unusual venues around Scotland to “surprise people with a slice of opera”.

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They were two very different ways of taking opera to the masses. The contrast begs the question of whether sold-out opera screenings from New York or other opera houses threaten, or boost, live and local classical music. Does Scottish Opera benefit, or lose, and what are the lessons for its own, very different outreach operations?

The New York Met, a Mecca for opera lovers, launched its live HD broadcasts back in 2006 to six countries. They now go to more than 50, using six different satellites to transmit to 1,600 cinemas, including 76 in the UK, reaching two million people, with multiple screenings from a full opera season.

There was one surprising discovery at the Cameo. The sound does not have the explosion of voice, or shivering thrills, in the kind of glass-breaking movie surround sound you would expect. Presumably it reflects a live, rather than pre-recorded sound; a producer working hard on modulating voices and mikes with the performance underway.

But it rapidly developed into a stellar evening. A ravishingly handsome Don Giovanni in Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien, and magnificent supporting players, like Mojca Erdmann as the deliciously flirtatious peasant girl Zerlina.

The on-screen subtitles, as opposed to theatre surtitles, are better assigned to each character, showing a libretto and plot that has surprisingly modern and multi-layered humour, far beyond the tale of a roguish womaniser who gets his comeuppance, to a reflection on sexual violence and promiscuity.

Sadly the audience, as all too often at the Usher Hall too, was still overwhelmingly grey-haired. Tickets cost roughly half the price of a full staged opera in Edinburgh, with seats comfortable enough to take a nap when you want.

No-one expects Scottish Opera to rival the Met’s productions for vocal firepower – though their recent show of Orpheus in the Underworld, rewritten by Rory Bremner, wittily and deliciously performed on a low budget scale, and their Barber of Seville main production has had near-rave reviews.

But Edinburgh’s classical audience is presumably limited, and the main space at the Cameo must be pulling 300 people out of the weekend night mix. A “Sainsbury’s local”, socking it to the small traders, or recruiting more opera lovers?

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It’s Scottish Opera that must face the biggest potential threat. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Robin Ticciati or the BBC SSO’s Donald Runnicles, rightly command local loyalties for an international calibre of talent.

Scottish Opera’s pan-Scottish operations depend not on high-speed broadcast technology, but sending performers and educators to more than 40 venues the length and breath of Scotland, from piano-accompanied productions to BabyO “sensory performance experience” for six to 18-month-olds. The company says there is “a huge amount of technological infrastructure needed” for broadcast screenings, and cites a rise in audience figures of 7.5 per cent this year. But should it be doing more with film, of its own productions, or others?