[Met Performance] CID:161280



Carmen
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, December 11, 1952 Telecast





Carmen (491)
Georges Bizet | Henri Meilhac/Ludovic Hal?vy
Carmen
Ris? Stevens

Don Jos?
Richard Tucker

Micaela
Nadine Conner

Escamillo
Robert Merrill

Frasquita
Lucine Amara

Merc?d?s
Margaret Roggero

Remendado
Alessio De Paolis

Danca?re
George Cehanovsky

Zuniga
Osie Hawkins

Moral?s
Clifford Harvuot

Dance
Janet Collins

Dance
Loren Hightower


Conductor
Fritz Reiner


TV Director
Clark Jones





The performance was relayed via closed-circuit television to 31 movie theaters in 26 cities throughout the United States.

Review 1:

Unsigned review and account in the San Antonio Herald-Times
Televised Operas Could Be Improved

New York being the kind of place it is, one could see the historic first theatre television showing a performance from the Metropolitan Opera House in no less than three different aspects of traveling a scant half dozen blocks.

Along with theatre-goers in 30 cities over the country, I took a seat in a movie house at 8:25, was greeted with the sound of the familiar prelude to ?Carmen? a few moments later, and absorbed the first act as it was happening in Buffalo and San Francisco, Kansas City, Chicago and Denver, as well as on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House.

No hardy conservative, I still found the picture muddy, the sound but fair. How a viewer to whom this was the first contact with the much-admired settings of Rolf Gerard and the vital direction of Tyrone Guthrie might react, I could hardly say. I can say, however, that what was seen was at best no more than 30 percent of the values of the original.

ANIMATED AUDIENCE

That original, in the Met itself, was the next port of call. Here one found an audience decidedly more animated than most of those one sees at the average opera performance, keenly interested in their role of participant in a new venture.

Soon enough, too, one noticed the cameras spotted in three locations around the auditorium, the spotlights positioned in the orchestra pit and in strategic points elsewhere to flood the stage with more light than is required for ordinary purposes. Withal, it was a vigorous performance of the second act I saw, with Rise Stevens, Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill (Escamillo) all performing at top form, and Fritz Reiner conducting vigorously.

Word among the grapevine was that the projection had been improved since the first act, and that this could be sampled to advantage in a studio within the opera building, where a screen close to size of that in the average small theatre had been set up.

BETTER PICTURE

Here, indeed, the image was a good deal cleaner, but certain basic faults remained. When the camera focused on performers in the foreground, those in the background became blurry and indistinct. Moreover, concentrated attention on the screen with its unrelieved blacks and whites (closer, actually, to browns and grays) was a strain on the eyes.

The device, per se, by which tens of thousands of people in remote places can see the same thing (more or less) than an audience in a theatre watching naturally captures the imagination. Its future possibilities are enormous. It?s my suspicion, however, that this trial-blazing effort will not command the kind of interest latent in the whole scheme until color is a part of it.

In the meantime a lot of valuable experience may be acquired and practical lessons learned. At best this is a guess, naturally, only a second and third showing, when the novelty has departed, can tell the story from the audience standpoint. From this specialized one the performance was far from the Metropolitan?s ?Carmen? to be really representative of it.


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