For my second Met excursion in a row (see my last post, Noir and Noh), comment has been heard from the peanut gallery, where I’m usually to be found. At Marnie, it took the form of falsetto mockery, and came after the curtain calls. This time (Dec. 5), it came midperformance, as poor Sister Angelica, having just learned of the death of the little son of whom she’d heard nothing in her seven years at the convent, stretched out a supplicating arm toward her implacable aunt, and sang “È morto? Ah . . .” Now, I could almost swear I did hear something there, albeit it did nothing to disrupt the unnatural calm of the proceedings. But from three or four rows back came the comment: “What?” The voice was firm and clear, neither youthful nor elderly. The tone was not of ill-intentioned disruption, but of genuine inquiry, as in “Is anything going on down there? If so, would you care to share?” Later, the same voice registered another reaction, but I didn’t quite catch it, which put it in the same category as many of the remarks being entered by the evening’s performers.
After my Marnie post, in which I yet again had occasion to note the low level of vocal energy coming off the stage, I heard from the highly regarded coach and co-Artistic Director of The New York Festival of Song, Steven Blier. Emphasizing that “I’m just reporting—others heard it, too,” he wrote as follows:
“The night I went to Marnie I was in the standing room section, and it seemed to me that not much sound was coming off the stage. If you can’t hear the singers and chorus under that overhang, something is wrong. It’s a very voice-friendly, orchestra-muffling spot. Ten minutes into the first act a strange thing happened. A guy came storming up the aisle and confronted the usher, loudly. ‘I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING! I’M IN ROW T AND I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING!’
“‘Sir, there is nothing I can do about it . . .’
“This continued, with the usher asking questions like ‘What row are you in?’—’ROW T! ROW T!’ After a few rounds of this I turned to them and said, ‘Guys, could you take your fight outside? You’re disturbing me.’ Row-T guy: ‘WHAT?’ Me (in Callas-like stage whisper): ‘I am trying to hear an opera and you are making a lot of noise and disturbing me.’ Row-T guy: ‘Who are you? Are you a subscriber?’ [Strange question, since I am in standing room.] Then he turned back to the usher and said something along the lines of, ‘I AM IN ROW T AND I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING! YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!’ The usher answered something like, ‘I can make a phone call, but I don’t think it will help.’ At this point they both seemed to disappear—I wasn’t sure what happened because I was trying to concentrate on Marnie. It was odd.
“Odder still: about seven minutes later, during the scene with Tony Griffey [in the role of Mr. Strutt—CLO] and the chorus when they are telling him he’s been ripped off by Isabel Leonard [Marnie], the volume from the stage jumped by at least fifty percent. Just like that. Boom. At intermission I asked people I ran into if they noticed it, and they all said they had. But no one else suggested the thing I was wondering: did someone turn on the mikes or the amplification or SOMETHING? Could Row T guy have been a technician? Or someone who’d already seen Marnie and was expecting the same vocal impact? It struck me later that he may have been asking for something very specific: the sound enhancement isn’t working, let the tech people know. I don’t know the answers to any of this, but it was one of the most notable things about the whole evening.”