OperaVision (“OV”) is a public relations initiative of some 20+ European opera companies aimed at encouraging people to enjoy opera productions. See www.operavision.eu.
The hyperactive OV website has many features. But the big deal is free Internet streaming of operas. First you can watch simultaneous streaming of certain operas during live performance. Then, for about a year, you can watch the show free on demand. In March 2020, OV had 21 operas up for you to enjoy.
What does OV mean to those of us who love Blu-ray discs with opera and other fine arts performances? For the moment, not much. But OV could in the future become a means of distributing opera titles (and other fine arts shows) on a permanent basis over the Internet in competition with Blu-ray discs. If this were to happen, we would have the mission of reviewing the OV streamed titles on HDVDarts.
So lately we have been picking through OV’s 21 current free operas just for fun. We stumbled over the first opera recording streamed over the Internet that is competitive, we think, with our Blu-rays: a 2019 production of The Bartered Bride (Smetana) from Garsington Opera directed by Paul Curran. This BB was lavished with praise by print critics who saw it live. It was lovingly shot for TV by Sonia Lovett and team. Lovett’s beautiful file perfectly captures the spirit of the show, which translates the story from Czech lore to an English village in the 1950s (still sung in Czech). Rehearsed past perfection, the show is as good as Glyndebourne! We don’t have a BB in Blu-ray, so see this while you can. (We would hope Lovett’s take will eventually get published on disc.)
Here are a few images from the The Bartered Bride. First the star-crossed lovers: Natalya Romaniw as Mařenka and Brenden Gunnell as Jeník:
Joshua Bloom makes big trouble as the marriage broker Kecal,:
The villagers:
Stuart Jackson as Vašek, the threat:
The circus:
Another rarity you should watch on OV while you can is Franz Schreker’s Der Ferne Klang directed by Christof Loy at the Swedish National Opera. We mostly hate Loy for all his scenes with 50 singers in black and white standing in a line across the stage, but here he redeems himself with some extravagant directing. And Agneta Eichenholz puts up an astonishing display of acting and singing stamina in the role of Grete, which is said to be the model later for Berg’s Lulu character. (BTW: Eichenholz (again with Loy) also makes for a remarkable steely Lulu, which we do have in Blu-ray.)
Most of the famous operas on the OV website appear to be terrible turkeys such as 2 horrible Don Giovannis, an atrocious Madama Butterfly, and a ridiculous lady Tosca killing her Scarpia with a pair of office scissors! (The mostly smaller opera houses backing OV have a lot of competition from the Met and other famous houses in the warhorse productions.)
Finally, we noted that OV is streaming the Glyndebourne Entführung aus dem Serail with Sally Matthews and Edgaras Montvidas that is also out now in Blu-ray. This gave us opportunity to do an AB comparison of the same file on disc and streaming over the Internet. In this case, the disc had slightly better resolution and color balance than the streamed product, which had a yellowish cast on our display. Also, the Blu-ray subtitles were much nicer than the streamed subtitles. Of course, the Blu-ray disc has many features, such as easy of moving about the file to different chapters, that the streamed version can’t match. But if you could watch the streamed version for say, $2.99 a pop, that would be a better value than buying the disc. Could this be what the future holds for us?