New York's Metropolitan Opera is sure trying. They're sending well-shot, high-definition videocasts of the top picks of their season to movie theaters across the country, including Anchorage's Century 16, where the new American opera "Doctor Atomic" will be shown Wednesday.
The title character, sung by Gerald Finley, is J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb. The surface plot is a surrealistic look at the crash program to create a nuclear device in World War II.
The real plot is Oppenheimer's inner battle as he yearns to succeed in the epic project that can end one war yet squirms with the knowledge that the bomb -- which is almost another, non-singing, character -- may cause future wars that can eliminate mankind.
Composer John Adams works in a romantic minimalist style, full of rapid, repeated motifs occasionally adorned with a nicely shaped melody. Critic Anthony Tommasini, reviewing the live production for The New York Times, calls this score "Adams' most complex and masterly music."
It had better be. Peter Sellers, who wrote the script, has filled it with pre-existing poetry, like John Donne's sonnets. This gives Adams the chance to let the soloists have nice turns in the spotlight but comes at the peril of stopping the action dead. According to Opera News magazine, one aria, set to a poem by Muriel Rukeyser, runs 12 minutes.
Sellers directed the premier in San Francisco in 2005. The Met didn't care for his staging, so it brought in award-winning British filmmaker Penny Woolcock. The set is predictably metaphorical but engrossing, with several characters confined to cabinets. The costumes leave one yearning for an era of fedoras, three-piece suits and cigarettes in everyone's fingers.
So what's it like? I saw the first Anchorage Met HD show in October, "Salome," and considered it the best $22 I spent all month. (Regular theater prices do not apply.) The drama was intense, the camera work tight, the picture sharp, the performance dazzling.
The electronic reproduction of acoustic sound was sometimes betrayed as a technician somewhere adjusted the levels. The quality may be even more elusive in Adams' piece, which uses sound effects and body mikes.
Close-ups of a muscular middle-aged soprano playing the role of the teenaged Salome required extra suspension of disbelief -- though no one in movies ever looks authentic to me.
However, friends who saw some of last year's presentations in the Lower 48 raved over the close-ups of singers in more visually appropriate roles. We'll have a chance to find out later in the season as some of the Met's most alluring stars -- Renee Fleming, Anna Netrebko, Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna -- perform.
Opera at the movies has been a hit in bigger markets. Ten Boston area theaters run the shows now, with 21,000 tickets sold last year. In fact, just getting the ticket can be a trick there.
But the protocols are still in flux. Most of the "Salome" audience stuck around for the curtain calls (filmed live in performance 10 days earlier) and even applauded their favorites as if they were actually there. Dress was mostly casual; no tuxes or strapless gowns. Century 16 does not serve wine.
The "Doctor Atomic" preview suggests that at least the choruses feature subtitles, even though the work is in English; perhaps that is not the case with the solo singers, who seem to be working hard for clear diction.
I'm not sure how intermissions will be handled. "Salome" is written as a single 110-minute act. "Doctor Atomic" runs 3 1/2 hours at the Met, but that includes one or two breaks.
What I do feel sure of is this: Expect an intense, strongly cerebral, probably disturbing and sometimes ravishing experience.
? Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
Doctor Atomic
Cast: Gerald Finley, Sasha Cooke, Richard Paul Fink
Director: Penny Woolcock
Running time: 201 minutes
Rated: Not rated
Playing at: Century (929-3456)
How much: $22, $20 seniors, $15 students/children
Web: fathomevents.com
Note: Shows at 7 p.m. Wednesday only
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