A little popcorn with your opera? Maria Stuarda, Live from the Met

Instant plot summary (Spoiler Alert!)

I recently took advantage of an opportunity to visit the Metropolitan Opera....in New York. One of the more artsy-fartsy cinemas in town hosts live broadcasts from the Met from time to time which are broadcast to something like 63 countries via satellite. Admission was 55 PLN, which ironically enough is just about what the cheap seats cost at actual, live performances of the opera in Krakow.

Why would people spend that kind of money? I think part of it has to do with a fundamental curiosity about America. One thing that is becoming increasingly clear as I spend my time here is that people pick up information about the United States in dribs and drabs from a variety of sources, and they sometimes have some skewed perceptions as a result. That's a separate post, but suffice to say at this point it is often from the more unofficial sources such as the Metropolitan Opera that people here get a sense of what life is like over there. Before the curtain there were a number of audience shots, and I could not help but wonder what was going through the minds of people for whom sitting in the house of an American production would be a novelty.

As this transmission was broadcast at a movie theater, the concession stand sold soda, popcorn, the usual movie-house bill of fare. Upstairs, before curtain and during intermission it was possible to buy coffee, little cookies, wine, the typical opera bill of fare. There was also a contrast evident in how people were dressed: some were dressed for the movies, some were dressed for the opera. Of course, this is how a typical opera audience dresses in the States, but it is more noticeable in a culture where "dressing appropriately" means something more than making sure you have a heavy-enough coat and a warm hat.

It is also worth noting that just about every building here in Poland has a cloakroom, and it is considered anywhere from somewhat to extremely gauche to bring your coat into a building with you and drape it on the back of your chair. This theater was definitely a place where you were expected to check your coat.

The seats were IMAX-ish, oversized and with ample legroom, sort of like a car's bucket seat. They did not fold. The screen was one of those wide-field-of-view semicircular ones, and the screen was behind a stage that would be large enough for a small concert (for which it is in fact used, from what I understand). This dual-use type of cinema went out of fashion in the U.S. 80 years ago, but it apparently remains here, at least to some extent.

The opera was Maria Stuarda by Donizetti, and was performed in Italian with English subtitles. The theater projected separate Polish subtitles underneath the screen. The “with the artists” segments at the intermission were not subtitled, which led to the rather unusual phenomenon of a large number of people sitting in a theater listening to an untranslated language that was not their own and not the dominant language of the country where the screen was located. Interesting to me was that a large number of people who elected to remain were middle-aged or older which means that many of them probably didn't actually speak English. Even those who did may have had difficulty with the accent, as again the American one is not commonly taught here and a number of people have told me that they understand British people just fine, but have trouble wit' dose Amurrikins over by dere like dat. 

The opera itself was, well, operatic as operas are wont to be. Basically, Roberto, 1st Earl of Leicester is hoping, to use the appropriate Italian phrase, to engage in bunga bunga with both Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, and as such is trying to reconcile these two women and prevent the former from executing the latter. He's assisted, somewhat ineptly, by Giorgio Talbot, whose motive remains, alas, unclear. Meanwhile,Guglielmo Cecil is urging exactly the opposite on Elizabeth: an immediate execution of her cousin. Ultimately, Elizabeth figures out that Roberto is potentially a two-timer, and more or less decides to chop Mary out of jealousy. Though this is not stated explicitly, considering the utter lack of political context and the fact that Mary is a goody two-shoes throughout, it's the most logical explanation. Bob takes this kind of hard, though obviously not as much as Mary does. There's in fact a scene where Elizabeth and Mary confront each other and more or less have a catfight in front of the English court. Other important parts of history, such as the Babington Plot, the wine-cask letters, the murder of Lord Darnley, the fact that Darnley was a jerkoff and the fact that Mary probably would have done the same to Elizabeth were the roles to be reversed were all somewhat glossed over.

What was not glossed over was the religious aspect of all this, and the fact that the lead, as usual, takes a good 45 minutes to die in the last act. In fact, in one of Mary's last arias she says "tell Elizabeth I forgive her, and that I hope God's wrath won't come thundering down on her heathen country." It was also interesting to see Elizabeth presented as a petty tyrant, which is such a contrast to how she's seen in the English-speaking world. It would be like making an opera about the American Civil War with Clement Vallandingham as the hero and Abraham Lincoln as the paranoid military dictator squashing dissent by suspending habeas corpus, whilst only tangentially mentioning that there was in fact a war going on.

The performance was, as to be expected, excellent. I particularly liked the portrayal of Elizabeth as a petulant, pouting monarch, and of Roberto, the smoothest operator this side of Silvio Berlusconi. Mary was a little overwrought for my taste, but the rest of the ensemble performed quite solidly. 

The music, as is typical in opera, compensated for the plot or lack thereof.