Hi. Great discussion. Love hearing your opinions. Uk opera fan here. So I’ve always heard that the old Met was much more similar in size and acoustic to Covent Garden. Which makes it even more sad that they had to pull it down.
With a decent plan, the old Met could have built up. If they had torn down everything but the auditorium and the front stairs, they could have built a modern spacious house, had they wanted to. But the Met Opera Company didn't want any competition. Competition would have been easy in a house that had supported a major opera company for 80 years. The reverb time at the old Met was 1.2 seconds. This is ideal for Italian opera. It's a little less good for Wagner and modern music. But it was fine for piano recitals (Joseph Hofmann in 1887 and 1937). The piano sounds loud and clear in the 1937 concert. What I remember about the old Met was the volume of sound. It got really loud in that auditorium. From anywhere in the Family Circle, the topmost balcony, the sound was wonderfully mixed and loud. From the last row of the "well" of the Family Circle, it was like being 5 feet away from the orchestra pit--amazing! The old Met's auditorium had 680,000 cubic feet of volume in the auditorium. The new Met has 1.2 million cubic feet. The best sound is in the Family Circle, again, but the people onstage are tiny. But who cares? I don't go to the opera to watch people act (and this includes Maria Callas); I go to hear music. The "well" of the old Met was that stretch of balcony that was higher than the main ceiling of the theatre. (at the new Met, they've angled the whole ceiling upwards so that they can have a very wide balcony that seats a lot of people). The well of the old Met was a copy of the well at Covent Garden which has the same design and the same wonderful acoustics in that part of the theatre.
The New Theatre had terrible acoustics. That was a great reason to tear it down. You couldn't hear anything in that auditorium. The old Met had the biggest stage in America when it opened. It still had the biggest stage in America when it was torn down. (The stage at Radio City Music Hall was wider, but the old Met was deeper. The main stage at the new Met is about the size of the stage at the old Met. But the new Met has side stages and a rear stage. It is worth noting that the Paris Opera House (the Garnier one) has the biggest stage in Europe.
This guy on the left is a fountain of misinformation. There was the original auditorium, a regular old C19 horseshoe auditorium. Then there was the fire in 1892. The theatre was rebuilt in 1893 more or less with the same decoration as the first Met. During the decade between 1893 and 1903, changes were made slowly to the auditorium. By 1898, the lights on the balcony-fronts were the same as in the gold house. By 1903, the architects Carrere and Hastings had installed the familiar red and gold decor that the house had until it was demolished. The golden damask curtain was installed in 1906. After that, the only change was to eliminate the Grand Tier boxes, and make the balcony faces the same as the other balconies. Carrere and Hastings redesigned another famous theatre in NYC: the Empire Theatre one block north of the Met. Originally the Empire theatre looked like most of the other theatres from the 1880s. These tended to be dark inside the auditoriums. Carrere and Hastings rebuilt the Empire and used the same ideas as their redesign of the Met. The same tangle of decorative objects on a broken column at the base of the proscenium. The same cross moulding with the same rosettes for the whole proscenium arch. And the same ceiling and sunburst chandelier. Some of the decor from the Empire Theatre ended up in the Abingdon Theatre in Virginia.
The Golden Horseshoe: The Life and Times of the Metropolitan Opera House. Viking Press 1965 authors are the editors of Opera News Frank Merkling, John W. Freeman, Gerald Fitzgerald, with Arthur Solin
Love your video and the discussion. But James McCracken? Worst Otello I ever heard. He always sounded like a chicken getting slaughtered, in almost anything he sang. He should have kept singing Parpignol…..Today, there aren’t many tenors who can pull off Otello, but keep an eye on Brian Jagde. He could be the Otello of the future. His “Forza” at the Met last season was DelMonaco-like…..
Thanks for the heads up on Brian Jagde. We came across Giancarlo Monsalve as well. He isn't currently singing due to his young family but that's a voice to keep an eye on! th-cam.com/video/K7C6Kv9US2Q/w-d-xo.html
Hi. Great discussion. Love hearing your opinions. Uk opera fan here. So I’ve always heard that the old Met was much more similar in size and acoustic to Covent Garden. Which makes it even more sad that they had to pull it down.
With a decent plan, the old Met could have built up. If they had torn down everything but the auditorium and the front stairs, they could have built a modern spacious house, had they wanted to. But the Met Opera Company didn't want any competition. Competition would have been easy in a house that had supported a major opera company for 80 years. The reverb time at the old Met was 1.2 seconds. This is ideal for Italian opera. It's a little less good for Wagner and modern music. But it was fine for piano recitals (Joseph Hofmann in 1887 and 1937). The piano sounds loud and clear in the 1937 concert. What I remember about the old Met was the volume of sound. It got really loud in that auditorium. From anywhere in the Family Circle, the topmost balcony, the sound was wonderfully mixed and loud. From the last row of the "well" of the Family Circle, it was like being 5 feet away from the orchestra pit--amazing! The old Met's auditorium had 680,000 cubic feet of volume in the auditorium. The new Met has 1.2 million cubic feet. The best sound is in the Family Circle, again, but the people onstage are tiny. But who cares? I don't go to the opera to watch people act (and this includes Maria Callas); I go to hear music. The "well" of the old Met was that stretch of balcony that was higher than the main ceiling of the theatre. (at the new Met, they've angled the whole ceiling upwards so that they can have a very wide balcony that seats a lot of people). The well of the old Met was a copy of the well at Covent Garden which has the same design and the same wonderful acoustics in that part of the theatre.
The New Theatre had terrible acoustics. That was a great reason to tear it down. You couldn't hear anything in that auditorium. The old Met had the biggest stage in America when it opened. It still had the biggest stage in America when it was torn down. (The stage at Radio City Music Hall was wider, but the old Met was deeper. The main stage at the new Met is about the size of the stage at the old Met. But the new Met has side stages and a rear stage. It is worth noting that the Paris Opera House (the Garnier one) has the biggest stage in Europe.
This guy on the left is a fountain of misinformation. There was the original auditorium, a regular old C19 horseshoe auditorium. Then there was the fire in 1892. The theatre was rebuilt in 1893 more or less with the same decoration as the first Met. During the decade between 1893 and 1903, changes were made slowly to the auditorium. By 1898, the lights on the balcony-fronts were the same as in the gold house. By 1903, the architects Carrere and Hastings had installed the familiar red and gold decor that the house had until it was demolished. The golden damask curtain was installed in 1906. After that, the only change was to eliminate the Grand Tier boxes, and make the balcony faces the same as the other balconies. Carrere and Hastings redesigned another famous theatre in NYC: the Empire Theatre one block north of the Met. Originally the Empire theatre looked like most of the other theatres from the 1880s. These tended to be dark inside the auditoriums. Carrere and Hastings rebuilt the Empire and used the same ideas as their redesign of the Met. The same tangle of decorative objects on a broken column at the base of the proscenium. The same cross moulding with the same rosettes for the whole proscenium arch. And the same ceiling and sunburst chandelier. Some of the decor from the Empire Theatre ended up in the Abingdon Theatre in Virginia.
What is this supposed to be?
please name the author and the publisher of the golden horseshoe. ( letting your listerners hanging, searchin in vain upand down the internet...)
The Golden Horseshoe: The Life and Times of the Metropolitan Opera House. Viking Press 1965 authors are the editors of Opera News Frank Merkling, John W. Freeman, Gerald Fitzgerald, with Arthur Solin
Love your video and the discussion. But James McCracken? Worst Otello I ever heard. He always sounded like a chicken getting slaughtered, in almost anything he sang. He should have kept singing Parpignol…..Today, there aren’t many tenors who can pull off Otello, but keep an eye on Brian Jagde. He could be the Otello of the future. His “Forza” at the Met last season was DelMonaco-like…..
Thanks for the heads up on Brian Jagde. We came across Giancarlo Monsalve as well. He isn't currently singing due to his young family but that's a voice to keep an eye on! th-cam.com/video/K7C6Kv9US2Q/w-d-xo.html