At the MonCiné in Beziers they take part in the Metropolitan Opera HD season and broadcast Operas live from time to time from the Met in New York.
About two years ago we went to a production of Lucia with Natalie Dessay which was a wonderful evening’s entertainment. Last year we had gone to the ballet from the Paris Opera Ballet; Les Enfants de Paradis which hadn’t been as stimulating. In January we turned up to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni only to have it cancelled at the last moment as one of its stars had an illness.
Last night’s Live from the Met, was La Traviata, again with Natalie Dessay in the title role and, as this is one of the very few operas I am familiar with since my youth, we headed off with much anticipation.
Act one didn’t let us down, the singing was magical, Dessay’s voice liquid beauty, the tenor also sounded so good one was prepared to overlook the fact that has acting ability was not up to much and the baritone, a Russian, with an impossible name, and a great head of white hair looked likely to be able to produce the act two showstopper, Di Provenza with élan.
Just at the intermission after act one our little world was turned upside down. Sirens went off in the Cinema and we were told to form a queue and leave the building in an orderly style. Now the MonCiné is on the very top floor of a huge new shopping in Beziers called the Polygone.
With sirens blaring the (fairly full) cinema started to shuffle off towards the door they had come in. This was the moment when a little Irish initiative seemed in order. As we shuffled off I noticed a stairway with a lit emergency exit sign, to the obvious alarm of the shuffling people around us I headed off down the stair, with Sile following, and managed to wrench the door at the bottom open.
We found ourselves in the very alimentary canal of the Polygone, in a well-lit but entirely industrial concrete block stairway. At every floor there was a bolted door but I soon discovered how they were opened and, now followed by about twenty, mainly elderly French people, we headed towards safety.
We were spurred on a little by the nasty smell of smoke which seemed to be coming up from the very bottom of the building where the car park was.
We eventually hit the light of day at the entrance to the car park where a huge vent from there was pouring out acrid smoke. We were sent over to one side by the Sapeurs Pompier, passing a huge mobile air pump manned by firemen and an open ambulance where a young man was being fed oxygen through a mask. We discovered that a fire had somehow started in a car in the car-park and this was being put out but the whole area was now filled with smoke.
The next half hour or so was spent with an ever dwindling number of French people perched by the car-park entrance while various little dramas were taking place. Two distraught dog owners arrived and explained that they had left their dogs in parked cars in the basement; two heroic Sapeurs donned gas masks and disappeared into the smoky depths to emerge later and to applause carrying a miniature yapping dog.
We eventually went around to the front of the centre only to find business more or less as usual and when we climbed the stairs to the cinema found that the opera showing had been restarted and that those who had shuffled out the front door were re-seated enjoying act three.
We were given an option of a complete refund or to continue watching the show so we went back to see it through. Unfortunately New York had not had the consideration to delay their matinee in the Met to allow for the car-park fire in Beziers so we completely missed Act 2 and just got back in time for the Di Provenza in Act 3.
Somehow though the magic had been taken from the evening and it was until the final death scene that I felt truly involved again.
Earlier, outside the building as we were being eaten by midges, an elderly French lady (one of my followers down the fire escape) said that they usually see these transmissions in Montpellier and “Nothing like this ever happens in Montpellier”.
Maybe that is where we should go for next years offerings.