Beyond ‘The Ring’ And The Machine: High-Tech Opera At The Met And Elsewhere

William Kentridge’s stagings of The Nose and Lulu were, and next season’s Wozzeck will be, packed tight with video imagery. (Yet they’re surprisingly easy for the stage technicians.) The whale boats in Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick couldn’t have existed without 21st-century technology. The animation in Barrie Kosky’s widely-traveled production of The Magic Flute is so intricate that some singers have to be strapped into place. David Patrick Stearns looks into the modern-day wizardry on the opera stage. – WQXR (New York City)