75Grand @ posthaven

No one expected the Puerto Rican Inquisition...especially the Met!Now I'm terrified about having sent my latest piece to you for review, Mr. de Torquemada.-----Original Message-----From: J. Galligan Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 10:04AMTo: Stephen FisherSubject: Re: Fitful Thinking - The (curre-megient) View from the BrigSteve:[I'll read your piece, right after I send the letter below]Maybe it's the weather, but my inner cornmudgin is emerging...curmudgeon [n] (plural curmudgeons) 1. An ill-tempered (and frequently old) person full of stubborn ideas oropinions. While numerous folk etymologies surround this word, there is no widelyaccepted etymology. An alternative spelling attested in 1600 is cornmudgin,in Holland's translation of Livy, rendering frumentarius "corn-merchant".This has been suggested as the original form of the word, but OED notes thatcurmudgeon is attested some years before this, concluding that cornmudginwas merely a nonce-word by Holland.

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 10:02 AM, Jan Galligan  wrote:

Letter to Peter Gelb, General Manager, Metropolitan Opera, NY, NY:

The Met HD - Viewing "Satyagraha": The Dis-advantage Point
01-12-11

Dear Mr. Gelb:

Last night I witnessed my first "The Met in HD" performance at Cine Metro in Santurce, PR. Over many years I have attended live opera performances including a couple in person at the Met, and as well routinely listened to live Saturday radio broadcasts of the Met in high fidelity. An ardent fan of the music of Philip Glass, one live performance I saw at the Met was the 1975 presentation of "Einstein on the Beach," so, I was primed with high expectation and careful preparation for this HD version of "Satyagraha." Unfortunately, my preparation did not include watching clips from any of the previous Met-HD productions. If I had, I would have purchased a Sony audio CD via Amazon, and stayed home.

As you said about Met-HD, "We want the electronic medium to give people an equivalent experience to what they'd have if they were here in the opera house. That's why the cameras ... were so hyperactive. The production's kinetic and that makes it cinematic. Some of the cameras are robots and we mounted them on the only vertical dollies in the world. They could rise 30 feet in the air on their internal poles and this created that sense of exhilaration you felt. (the opera) spills off the stage."

I did want the electronic medium to give me an equivalent experience to what I'd have if I were there in your house. Instead, I found myself at the end of a 30 foot pole being flung about from one end of the house to another. Things started out ok. Wide view of the proscenium stage, outside edges of the stage just meeting the limits of the projection screen. Then within moments, I'm flung up out of my seat nearly landing on the lap of one of the principals, only to be swooped up into the Family Circle, then row one of the Orchestra where I'm looking up the nostrils of the leading characters, then wham, I'm back in the Dress circle, and oops now I'm in the orchestra pit for a moment, and then, swooped nearly to the ceiling for a bird's eye view. Well, you get the picture. Maybe this works for most Met productions. It does not work for "Satyagraha."

Philip Glass's opera is a stately, majestic ritualistic pageant - I'm speaking musically - which demands similar staging and production. It is a slow unfolding of monumental events. It is not a story of small intimate details. The viewer should be left to witness for himself, in his own manner and at his own pace the slowly evolving force of truth. For this opera in particular, the viewer should not be forced to view the hairs on the back of Ghandi's hand, Miss Schlesen's rouged cheeks, or the sweat on Kallenbach's brow. We do not need to follow along on Gandhi's or Miss Schlesen's shoulder as they make their way through the crowd. Leave us in our seat, allow us our own view of the action, please.

I left at the end of Act I. Figuring mine is probably a lone voice in the wilderness, I google-searched other opinions of the Met-HD and as I suspected found the results to be generally favorable, although Tom Service, writing in the Guardian UK a few years ago said, "Give me divas - not DJs. More toe-curling attempts to make opera 'cool'? Stop it - it's doing just fine as it is." So, he and I agree. In fact, since the tele-visual production values of this HD presentation of "Satyagraha" seemed to derive most directly from HD football and baseball as seen on FOX Sports, I'd add, "Give me divas - not O.J., the football player or the soap opera character."

J. Galligan
Santa Olaya, PR

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From: Contact Us (The Met-HD)
Date: Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 10:03 AM

We have received your form and we will respond or a staff member will contact you, depending on the topic.

Thank you for your interest in the Metropolitan Opera.

-----Original Message-----

From: Dr. M. Jumpower (in guise of Peter Gelb)
Date: Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 11:11 AM

Dear Mr. Galligan:

In response to your thoughtful missive of 12/1/11:

Bah! Humbug! Feathersticks!  Bullfeathers! Hogwash!  Hooey!  Phooey!  Balderdash! Claptrap! Gibberish! Poppycock! Gobbledygook! Babble! Jabber! Bunkum! Hokum! Baloney! Twaddle! Rubbish! Rot! Drivel! Codswallop!

Sincerely,

Peter Gelb

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Jan Galligan
75Grand/Sur
Santa Olaya, PR

http://JANGuarte.posterous.com [art blog]
http://cinefestsanjuan.posterous.com [cine blog]