The Met rolls out a new season of live broadcasts with high-tech Wagner

• Yves Renaud/Metropolitan Opera
• The Metropolitan Opera will give a demonstration on how to use the machine this Saturday.

The buzz at The Met this season isn’t about a tenor, a soprano, a new conductor, or even about backstage diva antics. It’s about a machine. Or more precisely the machine.

“The machine” is the high-tech piece of stagecraft designed for the Met’s new productions of the four operas in Wagner’s “Ring Cycle.” It’s so enormous that the Met stage—already one of the largest and most technologically advanced in the world—had to be reinforced underneath with three 65 foot steel girders just to accommodate the machine’s 45 tons. It’s larger than life and just so... Wagnerian. (Though I can’t help but think: wouldn’t the perfect Wagnerian touch have been if the whole shebang collapsed just as the final note of “Götterdämmerung” sounded?)

It’s hard to say what exactly the machine does without having seen it in action, but the facts around it have been enough to get people talking: it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s cool, it’s never been thunk of before, it’s outrageously expensive, the various pieces rotate fluidly and independently and show moving images and possibly shoot lasers. The truth is that excitable Met fans shouldn’t try to picture what the machine will look like in action because their heads may explode.

The Met has been cagey about how much “the machine” cost and how much they had to tip the movers who brought it in: The New York Times estimates the final bill for the production will be over the $16 million mark, making it one of the most expensive, ambitious, and elaborate Met stage productions ever.