IF YOU HAVE never had the opportunity to see great opera, perhaps because you can’t afford it, now’s your chance.

The Metropolitan Opera, temporarily shut down because of the virus apocalypse, will be offering free nightly livestreaming from March 17 to March 22. You can see some of their biggest hits, including La Traviata (above), Il Trovatore, Carmen and others.

By the way, though this scene from Giuseppi Verdi’s La Traviata trumpets the idea that nothing is more important than pleasure, the opera delivers reality to hedonists. Like other 19th-century Italian operas, it’s an experience in emotional excess and musical bliss. If you find that you have grown arid and unable to feel, Verdi or Puccini will cure you. You’ll be drenched in tears before you know it. The Metropolitan Opera, like all modern arts institutions, has fallen victim to anti-nature multiculturalism, bare-breasted immodesty, ugliness, freakishness, sexual depravity, nihilism and the cult of celebrities, but it still delivers beauty and great music if you choose wisely from its productions.

[It’s best to save these corona freebies until Lent is over.]

Violetta’s costume in 1853 production of La Traviata

— Comments —

Michael D. writes:

Thanks for the tip on the Met dropping crumbs on us unwashed masses.

I have an elderly friend who is a retired orchestral musician who often goes to those live broadcasts.  Me, I never could cotton to the notion of (1) the cost, (2) the frequent kitsch production values from a visual sense, (3) and paying through the nose to sit in sticky theater seats to watch a crummy digital projector.

I moved years ago from a larger city and had to give up the opera habit.  I will say that La Traviata is the only opera I ever walked out on during the first act, haha.  I was like, “Verdi did this sissy thing, the same dude who gave the world great drama such as Aida and so forth?”  I note with interest that I couldn’t find Sr Domingo among the performers next week, nor the great Met vet James Levine conducting, at the link you provided us.  Wonder how that works. Ah well, I will console myself with Renee Fleming the last night.

If they are truly burning down civilization with this exercise, at least there is some free opera to enjoy on the way.

Laura writes:

Now that you mention it, I don’t really like the commentary in between acts in these live broadcasts. I prefer listening to the operas.

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