Film: "The Opera House"
This exclusive and immersive documentary about the building of the Met Opera House is bursting with archival footage and a gorgeous soundtrack.
There was no shortage of operatic-scale drama in the building of the Metropolitan Opera House, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last season. Award–winning documentary filmmaker Susan Froemke surveys a remarkable period of the Met’s rich history and a time of great change for New York. Featuring rarely seen archival footage, stills, recent interviews and a soundtrack of extraordinary Met performances, the film chronicles the creation of the Met’s storied home of the last 50 years, against the backdrop of the artists, architects and politicians who shaped the cultural life of New York City in the ’50s and ’60s. Among the notable figures in the film are famed soprano Leontyne Price, who opened the new Met in 1966 in Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra; Rudolf Bing, the Met’s imperious general manager, who engineered the move from the old house to the new one; Robert Moses, the unstoppable city planner who bulldozed an entire neighborhood to make room for Lincoln Center; and Wallace Harrison, whose quest for architectural glory was never fully realized. Most of all, though, this is a film about love for and devotion to the preservation of an art form, and the upkeep of a home where it can live and thrive. D: Susan Froemke, US, 2017, Runtime: 1h48m
Programmer's Note: It feels especially appropriate to screen this documentary here in Spaulding, given that architect Wallace K. Harrison designed both the Hopkins Center (which opened in 1962) and the Metropolitan Opera House (which opened in 1966). We celebrate both of these cultural centers with this exclusive documentary!
