Big-screen opera

Just a few years ago, the movie marquee now overlooking busy Columbus Boulevard would have read like a prank, a mistake or science fiction: Right below "Free Popcorn Every Tuesday" at the United Artists Riverview Cinema, it says "Advance Tickets Now on Sale - Met Opera Series."

That's right: opera.

From South Philly to opera-deprived Bismarck, N.D., the Metropolitan Opera's high-definition simulcasts have hit a level of popularity that requires planning. Though the initial simulcast in December 2006 had just two local outlets, Saturday's 1 p.m. simulcast of Richard Strauss' Salome will be seen in seven local theaters - which is also the number of veils that glamorous Finnish soprano Karita Mattila will shed at the opera's climax.

"It will not be a repeat of the Janet Jackson Super Bowl show," says Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met in New York. Though Gelb is one of the few impresarios with a Salome who looks as good (even without clothes) as she sounds, he's not about to blow the single greatest operatic success story of the still-young century with indiscreet camerawork.

Though the first to succeed with high-definition satellite transmissions of live opera, the Met now has competition. Emerging Pictures, a more diverse company in New York, is making inroads into Philadelphia cinema houses with opera from Italy, Austria, Russia and England, in what president Giovanni Cozzi says should be "a virtual trip" through operatic Europe.

"The idea is to present things they [Americans] wouldn't have access to," Cozzi says. "Glyndebourne [in England] is an incubator for some pretty special talents. Salzburg has some pretty innovative shows" - some far racier than the Met's Salome, requiring Cozzi's own version of parental advisories.

With Emerging Pictures' 24 events at three area locations and the Met's 11 live simulcasts, most of which offer "encore" transmissions the following day, high-definition opera is within 20 minutes of driving distance for Philadelphians on most weekends.

These two forces are what have emerged so far during a brief wild-west period, when several possible technologies were explored in various venues by, among others, the Washington National Opera, San Francisco Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra. None had the Met's success, though Washington went from simulcasting La Boheme to schools such as Temple University last year to La Traviata on a Jumbotron screen this fall at Nationals Park, the city's new baseball stadium.

The Met has its populist moments when simulcasting its opening night into Times Square, but the focus is more about spreading a concentrated operatic experience - as opposed to the picnic opera experience - beyond its four walls in Lincoln Center, and making it pay. Each simulcast is later seen on PBS and released on Universal Music DVDs, allowing each of them to break even on their $1 million to $1.5 million costs.

Gelb gives much credit to the company's longtime brand: "We were so well established through radio broadcasts [since the 1930s] that the Met has a global electronic audience. And that's what I was counting on."

Emerging Pictures has most of the other great performing-arts brands - one late-October presentation is Verdi's Otello from Salzburg featuring ex-Philadelphia Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti and local tenor Stephen Costello - but is running well behind the Met with 150 worldwide venues, compared with the Met's 850.

Part of the company strategy is steering away from the Met's turf by utilizing performing arts centers as well as movie houses. That's technologically possible because most transmissions aren't live, but with the video information sent in files over broadband lines. The overhead is lower: Opera videos are widely produced for European TV; Emerging Pictures adds subtitles and transmits. That affords flexibility - Bellini's Norma from Bologna will be seen at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute on Oct. 22 and at Ambler Theater Oct. 26 - but may lack the Met's live-transmission frisson.

So while these operatic titans imposingly stare each other down, you imagine smaller local companies cowering from the competition. Anything but. By coincidence, the Met's wont to simulcast specialized programming - the John Adams opera Doctor Atomic, for one - has little overlap with the Opera Company of Philadelphia's current season. Also, the company commissioned what amounted to an operatic environmental impact study showing that Met simulcasts created "better and more consistent" local customers for the art form in general, says OCP managing director David Devan.

"With the bar being raised through these broadcasts, quality is now a matter of survival, not just a luxury," he added. "That resonated with people who care about opera here and are prepared to be philanthropic about it." Witness OCP's stylishly sculpted, $2 million production of Fidelio that opens tonight.

What voice mavens fear, however, is that visual-age opera will render Salomes that look far better than they sound. Such tendencies have been noted in parts of Europe. Gelb swears it won't happen here under his watch.

"We're not casting singers for HD, but the best singers and best actors who command the stage of the Met," he said. "Somebody who looks good on camera still has to sing to 4,000 people in the house. And there's no place to hide on the stage of the Met."