Wagner screening hits high notes for live broadcasts

Arts Editor

Saturday 2 March 2013

Today, one event will bring together people around the globe in a way that bears comparison with the Olympics and Live Aid.

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Keith Bruce

From 5pm GMT, the Metropolitan Opera production of Parsifal will be broadcast in audio across the world, including by Radio 3, and shown in cinemas in the Met's Live In HD series. I am not aware of these two arms of the Met's global reach occurring from the same Saturday matinee in Manhattan before.

This production has been directed by the great Canadian Francois Girard, who brought Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex to the Edinburgh Festival and directed Siegfried for Canadian Opera's Ring. It stars Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, heading a cast that has been described as the finest possible for the work in our age. Of all the events of Wagner's bi-centenary year, this one will surely never be surpassed, as millions settle by their wireless sets or into their cinema seats for the five-hour epic to unfold.Without doubt, the expansion of opera into the arthouses and multiplexes is one of the cultural phenomenons of our time. Digital and satellite technology has made it possible for this hugely expensive artform to be brought to the doorsteps of just about everyone, banishing the insult of elitism with which it has been tarnished recently – or making us all potential members of that elite, if you like.It is not just the Met that is on board, of course. The Royal Opera House has put opera and ballet up on the screen and the National Theatre in London's NT Live series has taken acclaimed shows out of the metropolis – the next being Alan Bennett's People on March 21. There are limits, however. Visual art is getting in on the act with Exhibition, documentaries that take the viewer around the walls and behind the scenes at the Manet show at the Royal Academy in London (on April 11) and then to the Munch show in Oslo and Vermeer at the National Gallery. But these are surely films rather than a "live" extension of the actual exhibition.And as for London's Comedy Store's Raw And Uncut cinema shows, the next of which features Adam Bloom and Glenn Wool on Friday, I would suggest a boycott and the demand that lazy money-grubbing stand-ups get on their bikes and win over audiences in Scottish clubs.

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Wagner screening hits high notes for live broadcasts

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