The Opera House: PBS explores the Metropolitan Opera (Review)

The Opera House: a new documentary from PBS explores the Metropolitan Opera and life in New York in the 1950s -1960s.

The Metropolitan Opera is home to creative and talented artists from all over the world. Starting in 2006, Peter Gleb is the 16th general manager in the history of the Metropolitan Opera.

Founded in 1883, the original Metropolitan Opera was built by businessmen who wanted their own theatre. This theatre on 39th street and Broadway was not large enough for the scale of productions that they wanted to perform. The present opera house found at Lincoln Center is more suited to such productions.

From the opening, given by Peter Gelb, this documentary takes you into the world of the Metropolitan Opera; it sets the tone for the documentary that you’re about to see.

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The first person interviewed for the program was the American soprano Leontyne Price, who turned 91 in February 2018. This documentary includes a clip of Price in the opera Aida in 1985. Price says “That’s the first thing on your list is just to sing and enjoy, because that is that makes the audience love the whole human experience.”

Alfred Hubay, the box office manager from 1962-1987, leads the next segment of the documentary. Hubay speaks of his times being an usher at the met in 1943, speaking about how he remembers his first opening night as an usher.

Rudolph Bing, an Austrian-born opera impresario, wanted to improve the scale of productions of the Metropolitan Opera. Through old videos, the viewer can see how much Bing loved and cared about the world of Opera. Bing was the manager in 1966 when the new building opened.

Reminiscing as the speakers talk about “the old Met,” like having to use 7th Avenue to store set pieces because there was not enough room backstage, opens the viewer to the world of opera as it was at the turn of the century.

Robert Moses, a former New York public official, had the vision to transform the West Side of Manhattan. One of the things on his list was bringing more arts and culture to the West Side, which came in the form of Lincoln Center, where the Met Opera is housed today. He demolished an entire neighborhood to get the project completed.

The architect at the helm of the Lincoln Center project was Wallace K. Harrison, who had built Rockefeller Center and the United Nations. Each individual building had a different designer, so Harrison needed to make sure that the designs worked well with the other.

By 1966 Lincoln Square, which included the new Metropolitan Opera, had opened on the West Side, and the first performance was the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s opera Antony and Cleopatra (produced and directed by Franco Zeffirelli). Barber was an American composer, and his opera was one of the nine in the opening season at the new home. Singing the role of Cleopatra in the opera, Price was one of the first singers to sing at the new home for opera.

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David Horn, the executive producer of Great Performances, says: “This film was a natural for us, given our long-standing partnership with the Metropolitan Opera on Great Performances at the Met, which brings opera performances into homes across the country. This fascinating documentary captures not only the epic drama of building a new opera house but the creative challenges of commissioning and staging the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra.”

If you want to learn more about the world of Opera, more specifically how the Met got to where it is today, this documentary is a must-watch. I loved the fact that the documentary had clips and photos, it really brought you into the world of Opera, and it showed you how diverse the world of Opera is. Any fan of music would like this documentary because it talked about the early days of opera at the Met, and it was an interesting look at the way that the Met works today.

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