Massenet’s Manon via HD Live

Lisette Oropesa in Manon. All photos © Marty Sohl / Met Opera

Massenet's opera, Manon was grand today, more than I could have ever expected when I was a young music history major back in the late 1950’s.

The theatre was full of people my age, and a little younger. All of them must have developed a taste for the opera over the years.

One of them fell while trying to go up the stairs during the second intermission.

She fell backward, her feet close to the stairs and her body was across the isle. I had been out walking in the halls when she feel. I was down by the entrance to the theatre, close enough to the ticket taker that I could hear what was said into her earphones: “a fall in theatre 10”. I wondered if a human being had fallen or if that was code for “drink and popcorn has spilled all over and we need someone to clean it up".

It is hard not to be really interested in how a theatre takes care of someone in this kind of distress. The paramedics came, and I watched them take her pulse, get her to her feet and on the gurney, and then move her around so that she could lay back and have her feet put in a more comfortable position. As she was being moved, she told them she was going to throw-up and they had a bag there for her instantly.  I still watched.  And finally there were blankets to wrap her in, all the time explaining what they were doing.

I turned to the woman next to me and told her, “That could have been anyone in this theatre. I think we are all watching this poor woman as though we are experiencing it by proxy.”

The taste for opera lies in people who are older. Or perhaps they are the ones who can afford to go. When the paramedics left the theatre, I noticed that no one else accompanied the older woman, though some who sat around her had tucked her cane and her purse around her.

Again that could have been me.

 I just must go to these events, even if I can’t find anyone else to go with me (although Rebecca and I met her friends there, so we weren't alone).

And why not go even if you can't find anyone else who wants to? The five hours was exquisite: the music, the costuming, the acting, the blocking of the scenes, the set, and the entertainment that poses as information about the opera that is brought in at the intervals. There was a virtual trip into the prompter’s box today, as well as a short interview with the head carpenter, the head electrician and the head stage manager.

Coming up? Akhnaten (l983) by Phillip Glass. This opera is for the adventurous. We saw some previous for it. No spoilers, but the singers stay for a long time on one note.