The Magic Line

We filmed the performance on Saturday for the web-stream which is available from 6:30pm on November 3rd on the BBC Radio 3 website (Visit). Technically it was a live-wire experience. It wasn’t possible to view all the material while it was being filmed; I was in a box at the back of the stalls with one cameraman, linked by a headset to a second camera being operated in a box on the other side of the auditorium. There were two small fixed cameras on the stage, one filming Ed Gardner conducting, and two hand-held cameras in the wings. All the cameras were synchronised with timecodes.

My original idea for the web-cast was to create a 360-degree experience for people worldwide so they could view both the audience viewpoint and the backstage reality in two windows side by side on their laptops in real-time; but after much discussion with the BBC they decided, sadly, that the images would be too “degraded.” So people will only be able to watch one viewpoint or another at any one moment (unless they put two laptops next to each other and synchronise the start moment!) and the stream will be limited to those in the UK. Nevertheless, it’s a first.

I had two days to edit the material. It was a race against time to create the entire show twice over - each act as seen from the auditorium and each act as seen from the wings and the back of the stage. That’s a total of six hours of viewing time. (To put this in perspective, I usually take about six months to edit a film of 90 minutes.)

It is in the back-stage footage that some of the most vibrant imagery emerged, as I predicted. The camera eye likes to penetrate the “fourth wall” of theatre - the chiaroscuro effect is dynamic in its extremes of brilliance and shadow when you look out towards the auditorium into the lights. And the feeling of the performers’ reality - waiting “off” and then stepping over the magic line into the heat of the gaze of the audience - is emotionally and aesthetically highly charged. I experience it as a sacred moment - the crossing of the line - which is often covered, with lovely understatement, by profane and casual behaviour. Performers laugh, chat and stretch as if nothing of relevance is happening. But then - with a sudden animal-like intensity - their energy changes as they go out onto the stage. Their performances, viewed from the wings, reveal many nuances to the camera that remain hidden to an audience.

The web-stream will give viewers the opportunity to watch the entire opera, act by act, from these differing points of view; review moments of personal interest and compare the on-stage and off-stage realities.

It will also provide a chance for those who could not afford to buy a ticket, or could not travel to London to see the show, the opportunity to have their very own private experience of the opera and contemplate it at their leisure.

This is obviously a very different experience than sitting with others in a huge auditorium. It may be that a new audience will enter this particular theatrical world via their individual electronic portals. I hope these people will find it interesting.

For those who are already familiar with the opera - or, indeed, who have seen the production, it will provide a range of intimate and different viewpoints. Given the controversy surrounding the production this may well stimulate further discussion on a variety of subjects, including the interface between the internet, which is still such a young, evolving form, and opera, which has a relatively long and established history.

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