The set was minimal and dark, with sliding screens forming most of the necessary boundaries, but it served as the backdrop to wonderful lighting and costume choices that brought the space to life in vibrant, surprising ways.

Rather than movie previews, when the lights dimmed, the audience was treated to RenÃ©e Fleming interviewing the cast and crew backstage.Īs the opera began, a solo dancer emerged in silence, setting the stage for the detailed and period feel of the production with her gorgeous Japanese costume and spare yet graceful choreography. Rather than the usual movie ads, the screen showed special Metropolitan Opera ads and opera facts, while the Met orchestra could be heard warming up over the speakers, just as they would be heard in the opera house. At the live broadcast, there was a heightened level of excitement in the audience, even as people were taking their seats.

The March 7 performance of Butterfly was a dramatic feast for the eyes and the ears, although seeing it in the movie theater did not decrease my desire to see and hear it in the opera house. When the opera was reprised at the Met this season (after Minghella’s death last year), it was chosen for one of the live HD movie theater broadcasts that Gelb has pioneered for the opera house. Minghella’s lovely and innovative production of Madama Butterfly originally opened the Met’s 2006 season, a triumph for the new general manager, Peter Gelb. Watching film director Anthony Minghella‘s production of the Metropolitan Opera’s Madama Butterfly unfold onscreen at the local movie theater in live HD (High Definition) broadcast from the opera house became a reflexive experience of seeing a film director’s choices for a live theater performance translated again into film. With Patricia Racette, Marcello Giordani, Maria Zifchak, Dwayne Croft.

The metropolitan opera madama butterfly