Two technical gripes about these productions:
As wonderful and sophisticated as the camerawork is today, there are not nearly enough whole-stage shots. You get an establishing shot at the beginning of a scene, and usually a pull-back shot at the close, but as beautiful and fluid and unobtrusive as the close-up and medium shots are (and I mean that, it's all really excellent), I always miss being able to share, with the live audience, the effect and impact of the total stage design. This REALLY bothered me in the Berlioz "Damnation of Faust", which had one of the most intriguing set designs ever. The fact that we only saw the scope of it, and the impact of the blocking and movements thereon for just a few seconds at a time, was criminal.
Far worse, however, is how the audio is delivered. Those of us who remember the bad old days of the Saturday afternoon broadcasts coming to us over the telephone wires with low fidelity and enormous amounts of volume-level equalization (or limiting, or whatever you call it) were unfortunately reminded of that with the abominable automated sound-leveling taking place in this production. I don't recall this grabbing my attention at the other HD showings I've attended. This was grotesque, with constant "pumping and breathing", and soft solo flute passages blasted at a volume equal to that of the full orchestra. The orchestra's pickup in general is so processed as to render the Met Orchestra's sound, and textures of the score, muddy and "average" throughout. This is simply inexcusable. I totally understand that some adjustment for movie theaters is necessary, but I, DR ChasSmith, could have done a more sophisticated and unobtrusive job of it had I been manually "riding the gain" myself. This is out of control.
I also don't think we're getting a true, unfettered HD image delivery by Fathom. Maybe that's a reaction to watching video on such a huge screen, but I don't think so.
