By Patrick Dewane, Minnesota Opera

Tuesday night the Minnesota Opera did an eight camera High Definition video shoot of its production of Wuthering Heights. The HD video made for a night of many firsts—a first for any Twin Cities major cultural organization, a first for the Minnesota Opera and a first for this major work of art by one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.

As I’ve blogged previously, composer Bernard Herrmann is best known for his extraordinary film scores, collaborations with Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Brian DePalma and Martin Scorsese.  But he considered his only opera, Wuthering Heights, to be his greatest artistic achievement.  And for a variety of reasons, including Herrmann’s difficult personality, his opera was never produced in his lifetime and only once prior to the Minnesota Opera’s current production.  There is no cast recording or video from this previous production.  So only a few thousand people have ever seen this opera by an American Master, a composer whose music is beloved worldwide.  Indeed, ticket buyers have been flocking to St. Paul from around the country and around the world to see this rarity—the further distance traveled so far is from Australia.

And last Tuesday, a snowy night in St. Paul, the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts was filled with a capacity crowd that witnessed history. I watched the HD shoot from the video “truck,” a command control center that was like a NASA space launch.  It was stunning to watch the video close-ups of this good sounding and good looking cast.