Live and Still Wriggling from the Met!

The estimable Alex (The Rest is Noise) Ross links to his own New Yorker piece about a non-fiasco at the Met--as he succinctly puts it, Tristan and two Isoldes (link). And as Ross so insightfully observes, this kind of screwup is not a bug, it's a design feature:

Any true fan who claims to attend opera solely in the hope of encountering sublime displays of vocal and dramatic mastery is putting you on. Certainly, operagoers cherish those rare occasions when all variables intersect to create the appearance of perfection; but they hold just as dearly to the memory of those unmagical nights when it all falls spectacularly apart. The gladiatorial aspect of opera is as old as opera itself. No other art form is so exquisitely contrived to create fiasco.

Yeh, we know how that is. Mrs. B still enjoys regaling newbies about the night we saw the third-string Carmen with her leg in a cast, wiggling her little fanny through the Habanera while kneeling on a table--and how she used plates for castanets, and how they shattered midway--and how Escamillo powers through the door, only to have the wall fall down around him. But it sets me to worrying: I've waxed ecstatic already over the virtues of the new HD transmissions--a new world of opera, all seen from the comfort of your own gummy seat at the Palookaville multiplex (link). Will we be seeing any more of this? How live is "live," anyway? Note that the blooper reel is not enough. Somehow or other, we want the raw, unadulterated accident. Ross again:

As [new General Manager Peter] Gelb’s Met lays greater emphasis on marketing stars, it shouldn’t forget the primitive thrill of the unexpected, which causes the most devoted fans to return night after night.

Quite right, too. And Palookaville wants its disasters, just like everyone else.