For those who don't know what Summer HD Festival is, it's a series of outdoor screenings of past productions shown at Lincoln Center. It's free to attend and it runs until Sept. 6.

I have recently moved into my new dorm at NYU, and one of the Welcome Week events was a trip to Lincoln Center to see the screening of Hensel and Gretel. I was a bit skeptical of watching a non-live show, but I am never the one to resist free stuff, especially art/music things.

I got to Lincoln Center at about 7:20 and I was surprised at what I saw. The plaza was filled with chairs (2,800 chairs to be exact), and there was a huge screen mounted onto the Met building. The front section was full, but the back 2/3 seemed to be not so occupied, especially on the sides. I sat on the right side of the fountain, facing the Met building, and I had a pretty nice view of the screen. After I stopped worrying about the visual aspect of the screening, I got worried about the sound quality, weather, crying babies, and everything else there is to worry about, but keep reading because I'll tell you everything.

Summer HD Festival is a great opportunity for the opera lovers as well newcomers, and it is good enough to make you come back. The sound is of course not the same outdoors via speakers as live inside the Met, but you still hear everything word and instrument loudly and clearly without much echo (I feel bad for the Juilliard students who were trying to sleep). There were also subtitles, which was nice even when the opera was in English.

The camera work was fantastic. The HD quality is surely effective and it was cool to see an opera like a movie. Seeing an opera from various angles instead of from a seat on third tier definitely brings a different perspective. I especially liked the close-ups where I could see the performers’ expressions without having to squint through opera glasses.

This event definitely brings a different crowd from the live shows. At regular shows, I am used to seeing an audience where the average age is at least 60 (if there are enough college kids like me), there are no children under the age of 17 (Why is that? It's not like the Met's checking IDs), and everyone dresses up; today, I saw more family groups, a younger crowd overall, and casually dressed audience. Fortunately, there were certainly no crying babies or ringing phones (my worst nightmare at movie theaters); people do talk (read: whisper) more frequently than live productions, but they are not noisy enough to disturb your screening experience. 

Overall, I liked it. In fact, I’m planning on going again this Sunday to see Aida. Did I mention it’s free? Check out the website here.