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The Met Opera’s At-Home Gala: Informal Yet Profoundly Moving

Renée Fleming sang from her home in Virginia as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s At-Home Gala on Saturday.

The Metropolitan Opera has reserved sprawling gala performances, with dozens of singers, for festive milestones: the retirement of a longtime general manager, say, or the company’s 50th anniversary at Lincoln Center.

This moment, of course, is anything but festive. The coronavirus pandemic has swiftly reshaped life worldwide, and the Met, like theaters almost everywhere, has been shuttered since the middle of March, with no end in sight. It stands to lose up to $60 million just through next month, and it’s too early to say whether it will open its next season in September.

Yet on Saturday afternoon, the company summoned its estimable resources and put on a virtual At-Home Gala, which streamed live on its website (and remains available until 8 p.m. on Sunday).

For four hours, more than 40 of the opera’s stars gave performances from their homes around the world, transmitting arias — and, given some lucky marriages, duets — over their smartphones, tablets and laptops, with remarkably few snafus. It was a charmingly informal yet profoundly moving marathon.
Though things are bleak all over, and certainly for the Met, it was inspiring — and fun — to see beloved artists relaxed, smiling and sounding splendid, some in gala attire and some, well, not. The baritone Peter Mattei, dressed in a casual shirt and slacks at his lakefront home outside Stockholm, sang the serenade from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” — with the usual mandolin accompaniment played on accordion by a neighbor. The tenor Roberto Alagna and the soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, appearing together from France, delightedly hammed up a selection from Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore,” with Mr. Alagna clambering up the ladder attached to their bookshelves.
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