MET Opera Opening Night Gala
The show was Samson et Dalila, composed by Camille Saint-Saëns and sung in French. The opera is based on the biblical story and takes place in the city of Gaza.
To be clear, the MET Opera’s Opening Night is Gala is not the same thing as the MET Gala. They have deceptively similar names. They are both are fancy affairs that are quite rich, but Gala at the Metropolitan Museum is famous they one.
Dive in head first
I have never seen an opera before in my life and I had decided I was going to change that while living in New York, since where better. In my opinion, if you are going to something as unique as an opera might as well as do it at one of the most famous places.
Part of what helped motivate me to see an opera was a tech podcaster who I listen to that talked about the experience of going to The Met Opera. This added recommendation helped push me over the edge.
It is suspiciously hard to find out what to expect from an opening night gala. My googling on the subject only really turned up photos of celebrities. The Met’s website has a page devoted to “What to Expect” but it defiantly does not answer all the questions a person is likely to have. I followed the suggestions The Met gave on how to prepare but I was curious what to expect from the event overall.
The Experience
The obvious question is, "did you understand it?" Sort of. Unless you are fully fluent in the language of the play, you are going to miss most of the plot without the subtitles. Luckily, not only does the Lincoln Center have subtitles, they are built for each seat. Each seat has a small screen in front that show the translation for the selected language. What is nice is they have a filter so you can only see the screens at a select angle; this way the light from everyone's screen is not distracting. The screens are fantastically helpful and a pretty convenient way to solve the problem of not understanding and international audience.
The one problem with the screens is that it's hard to feel the emotion on a song when reading it off a screen. The story of Samson et Dalila is about love, passion, betrayal, but I found myself having a hard time connecting with the characters and their struggle. Some of this may be just this specific opera, but I think it is because of the language barrier. Reading words off a screen that have been translated from another language strips away the meaning and the emotion that helps the audience connect with the story. If you don't mind watching foreign films, then this may not be a problem.
I think the individual screens for each seat are by far the best solution to the problem and I would not have enjoyed the opera without some form of translation. I think it is an important thing to understand for the first time before going in. Doing some research on the story and maybe watching some videos on it will help a lot.
Between acts
One thing that became obvious to me was that an opera is about the whole experience, not just the show. An example of this is the intermissions between acts. Samson et Dalila is a grand opera in three acts, and each intermission is between 30-40 minutes, far more than the single intermission most plays have. Obviously, you need time to go to the restroom and get a drink, but they definitely seem to account for time to talk, people-watch, and get some photos.
I took the time to walk around the place a bit and see the different levels. There is also a balcony that looks out at the Lincoln Center that is a great place to get some air and have a great view
People watching & celebrity spotting
As I mentioned, the intermissions give plenty of time for people-watching.
Unfortunately, celebrity spotting can be a bit difficult because they are likely to book the private's rooms on the Parterre level or are generally sectioned off from the common folk. Never the less I was on alert to find some celeb or famous person during the intermissions. Despite my searching, I was unsuccessful in finding anyone I knew the whole night. It was not until the next night I saw a post on Instagram from one of the few celebrities I follow, Erich Bergen was there, and I had missed him!
The location
The Metropolitan Opera House is massive, holding up to 3800 people. The building is one of the buildings that make up The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which takes up multiple city blocks. The massive glass front shows off its opulent atrium.
The Attire
The Met’s website has a page for “What to Expect” with a section on “what to wear.” While they state up front that there is no official dress code there is a pretty heavy “but” people like to dress up for a night out at the Opera. This message of you don’t have to dress up to everyone else is reinforced by the Instagram account they link off to: @LastNightAtTheMet.
As tempting as it was to rent a tux I decided to go with a grey suit and use to opportunity to order a verity pack of colored pocket squares off Amazon. My goal was to aim for the middle of the road in attire, not super dressy or super casual and not too crazy.
Since there is no defined dress code you will see just about everything. Even for opening night I saw everything from feathers and tailcoats to t-shirts. The experience made it clear that people can have vastly different ideas of what it means to dress up.
If you are there purely for the show, then throw on whatever you like. For me, I think there is more to the experience, and dressing up is part of it. Whatever you want to wear, go for it, I guarantee you will likely not be the most dressy or the most underdressed.
