Opera on YouTube
Opera on YouTube - better than nothing and sometimes really good!
In over 60 years of opera going I have been to over 100 opera houses all over the world, in Europe, the USA and Australia and seen some great and some not so great performances. However at the age of 81, I am less adventurous and much more discriminating about going to the opera. I recent years I have wasted time and money on both undistinguished reprisals and indulgent ‘Regietheater’, director’s opera where the directors are determined to ‘modernise’ opera. To be fair some modernised productions do work well: for instance, Jonathan Miller’s famous Mafia production of ‘Rigoletto’, set in 1950’s New York worked really well. I saw it at the English National Opera in 1982, where it was a great success and has been repeated many times since. Jonathan Miller is on record as saying there are only about 40 operas worth doing! A brilliant opera like ‘Rigoletto’ in the hands of a creative genius like Miller can lead to a brilliant performance. Unfortunately, Jonathan Miller’s ‘Rigoletto’ is in the minority of modern productions. I have been bored, offended, horrified and walked out of many others. A few horrors come to mind: notably the current ‘Lucia de Lammermuir’ production at Covent Garden by Katie Mitchell which has the supposedly chaste Lucia having an orgasm during her first aria, getting pregnant, having an abortion and spending most of one act in a blood-filled bath! Poor soprano, not to mention poor audience! Then there was the Fiona Shaw production of ‘Medea’ at Wexford in 2017, set in a gym, but notably redeemed by the music and the early ‘discovery’ of Lise Davidsen, who has gone on to be the leading dramatic soprano in the world. Great performers too can transcend silly productions. Then of course there was Wagner’s Ring production in Berlin the other year where the Rhinemaidens were laboratory assistants in white coats carrying out research on rabbits’ brains! The animal protection movement objected to the treatment of the rabbits; I said I was more concerned about the protection of the audience many of them who had paid hundreds of pounds for their tickets. I met one elderly woman leaving the opera house at the interval who told me she had been insulted and offended by the production and she had been coming to the opera for more than 50 years. You can read my review in the Edinburgh Music Review where I tell how it was booed at the end of every act; a long suffering German neighbour told me “we don’t feel we get our money’s worth unless we boo”!
So in my eighties I have become much more discriminating in my opera going, but the good news is that my opera desires are being met much more by opera via YouTube. Each morning that very clever man who runs YouTube, Mr ‘Al Gorythm’, brings me new operas from around the world; some are very old productions but often with great singers from the past, some of whom I remember from Covent Garden in the 1960s. But some are very new productions, including those currently on the stage from Covent Garden, La Scala or the Met. Often they have English surtitles but, if not, you can get the synopsis and the libretto from the web. You can also of course get critiques from critics’ reviews and also from opera loving viewers on YouTube who give very worthwhile and often very well-informed comments on the productions. However I do offer one important piece of advice, that is to take out an ad-free subscription to YouTube. It costs £12.99 a month but is worth it. Having your opera broken up by adverts is truly awful and the subscription is a worthwhile investment, given the money you save by not going to the opera or indeed the cinema for opera relays which cost over £20 a time. Another tip is to link your TV to your HiFi, or get a sound bar, as most TV’s have rather poor speakers.
To give you a flavour of operatic life on YouTube, in the last month I have seen new productions of ‘Tosca’ from the Met and Covent Garden and ‘Traviata’ from Madrid, via Operavision, and enjoyed all the main staged operas from the Wexford Festival courtesy of Ireland’s TV channel RTE. The Edinburgh Music Review’s excellent critic, Donal Hurley, reviewed 10 different performances at Wexford, and of course being there is always better than watching a streamed performance. Nevertheless, having been to Wexford a number of times, it was enjoyable to relax at home and watch it on TV. There are also often infrequently performed operas; for instance, today I have been viewing ‘Matilde Di Shabran’ by Rossini from last summer’s Rossini festival at Pesaro and it looks and sounds very good.
There are a number of good sites on YouTube which will bring you operas. I subscribe free to some of them, such as Lady Izolde and Operavision, but the great thing is once you start viewing opera the algorithms will quickly bring you more each day, and indeed any other musical genre you display an interest in. String quartets, like the Doric, often they have their own YouTube channel, and a great deal of chamber music including the Wigmore Hall’s regular free broadcasts, is available. Of course classic performances of the past can often be tracked down – my own favourite is what I think is the greatest live performance ever of the Verdi Requiem at the Edinburgh Festival in 1982 with Margaret Price, Jesseye Norman, Rugerrio Raimondi and Jose Carreras with the LSO and the Festival Chorus conducted by Claudio Abbado. I take particular pleasure in fleeting glimpses of myself in the audience!
So there is life after live attendance at opera, and from time to time I will bring you my choices of performance and will also be grateful for any suggestions from our readers who now number about 10,000 a month! Let’s enjoy our music at home and share it with each other!
Photo is of Freddie de Tommaso, who can be seen in a recent production from the Met: ‘La Boheme’, courtesy of Lady Izolde on YouTube
