Making Creator Headlines · Page 6
The Met Takes a Centuries-Old Art Form to the Feed
· New York time
New York's Metropolitan Opera is using YouTube to look for a new generation of fans, offering open access to a livestream of its new opera Lincoln in the Bardo. Based on George Saunders's novel, the work had its world premiere at the Met the previous month. The move brings one of America's best-known opera institutions to a platform where viewers routinely discover music and performance without first planning a visit to an opera house. For an art form with a history spanning centuries, the challenge is not simply to preserve what happens onstage. It is also to give people a first encounter that makes them curious enough to seek more. YouTube offers a place for that introduction alongside the huge variety of other things a viewer might watch. A major institution can reach people far beyond its building, while viewers can sample a performance without needing to understand every convention in advance. The screen cannot reproduce the entire experience of being in a theater, but it can make the distance to the theater feel shorter. Opera has survived changes in fashion, technology and entertainment habits. Its latest potential audience may meet it between a cooking tutorial and a video about repairing a sink. The overture now has to share a waiting room with the entire internet.
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