“Take the present fad for viewing classical and operatic performances from the vantage point of a tiny camera, worn on the head of one of the participants,” writes Ivan Hewett in Thursday’s (10/9) Daily Telegraph (London). “Like everyone else, I’ve thrilled to the sight of the world from 30,000 feet as seen through a camera strapped to a skydiver’s helmet…. The appeal of the world as seen through an opera singer’s eyes, as relayed through Google Glass, is more puzzling. There’s no whiteknuckle ride to thrill to, and the images are often worse than the worst home-movie…. To immerse yourself in an opera like Turandot, you have to see it whole…. If you see it through the eyes of one participant, the performance is revealed for what it actually is: a bunch of people in fancy dress shouting in a foreign language. It’s no longer a performance, more a documentary about ‘what it’s really like to be in an opera/Baroque concerto.’ … In [the TV show] Maestro at the Opera we saw amateurs, or rather celebs, being prepared to become conductors. But at the end what we were offered was the total spectacle, seen from the audience’s point of view. The integrity of the performance was preserved, more or less.”
Posted October 9, 2014
