Introduction - Text 1
In January 2020, the music critic for the newspaper Le Devoir in Montreal, Christophe Huss, concluded an article on the “profoundly brilliant production” of the new iteration of the opera Wozzeck by exclaiming: “Run to see this masterpiece when it plays again.”[1] One might ask oneself towards what kind of “production,” precisely, one should run in this manner. Was it Alban Berg’s opera itself? Or was it the staging of that opera by the South African artist William Kentridge on the boards of the Metropolitan Opera of New York? Or was it the capture of this opera (in its 11 January 2020 version), as it was projected, live, in movie theatres around the world? This capture had been executed by one of the accredited directors of the opera house, Gary Halvorson, who according to Huss “has shown himself worthy of immortalizing this show with, by far, his best effort at the Met.”[2]
Reading the text, one realizes that what is being critically evaluated by Huss is “Kentridge’s production,” meaning the opera by Berg as it was staged by the South African artist on the legendary boards of the Lincoln Center. Huss did not attend this performance. He was, instead, in Montreal, comfortably seated in a movie theatre operated by the Cineplex chain which, as part of the series The Met: Live in HD, put on the transmission of the show filmed in New York. The opera was certainly transmitted “directly as it was performed,” or live, but it remains the case that Huss came into contact quite “indirectly” with this “masterpiece [of Kentridge’s]” (which he urges us to “see” in turn through Halvorson’s capture when it “plays again on March 7, 9, 11 or 15 depending on the movie theatre”). From this we must deduce that Huss is implicitly telling us not to pay too much attention to the work of transposition involved in Halvorson’s work of putting into images with his multiple-camera capturing. Indeed Huss resolutely directs our attention beyond the opera’s transmission on the big screen so that we put at the forefront of our concerns as viewers the vision of this “masterpiece” of precise staging that is Kentridge’s Wozzeck.
Live transmissions of diverse stage performances (opera, theatre, ballet, etc.) have become common currency since the digital transition made such a thing possible. Nevertheless, it would appear that there is a mixture of the original performance on stage and its capture projected onto the big screen, something which can give rise to confusion between two shows of a quite different nature. Viewers who are unable to attend the live show on site are placed in its presence instead by means of a considerable quantity of digital capturing and transmission equipment. They thus attend in a movie theatre the dissemination of this new kind of performance known, among other things, as a “live transmission,” one which is not “cinematic.”
The present text, in six sections, will attempt to answer a few of the questions raised by this new phenomenon, the live transmission, which has blurred the contours of standard movie theatre programming. What is the nature of these opera “transmissions”: are they a mere “calmly documented show”[3] or, as described by the Los Angeles Times, a “new art form”?[4] How should we define and what should we call this kind of programming, which has been playing in movie theatres since the first season of The Met: Live in HD in 2006? Can we see in this “new” versatility of the movie theatre a return to such experiments as “projected television” in the years immediately following the Second World War? What are the technical conditions which make possible such multiple-camera capturing and transmission via satellite around the planet? How do the directors of live transmissions deal with the imperatives involved in transmitting with complete transparency an operatic “masterpiece” while carrying out with talent a multiple-camera live capturing?
This parcours will first examine the origins of the live transmission, beginning with the earliest attempts to project live images in a movie theatre. It will also describe the production processes, technical equipment and professions necessary to the live transmission of events, drawing in particular on the case of the Metropolitan Opera of New York. Finally, this parcours will provide a critical assessment of the phenomenon based on an analysis of the critical and theoretical literature, which still suffers from many gaps.
