A Big-Screen Test for Opera

Funding is still a major question. Gockley estimates the cost of each San Francisco moviecast at about $250,000. The Met's pricier live transmissions cost around $1 million. Within the field, there are murmurs that Gelb has gone out on a limb financially, relying heavily on his patrons -- such as Mercedes Bass, who gave the company $25 million in 2006 -- to create initiatives that cannot continue if the donations dry up.

"I'm dubious," says Kenneth Feinberg, president of the board of trustees at the Washington National Opera, who learned the costs of simulcasting firsthand when the company last fall broadcast "La Bohème" not only to the Mall (at a cost of about $350,000) but also to 32 high schools and colleges across the country (an additional $650,000). Washington is not planning to repeat the experiment this season, and Feinberg asks, "Is it sustainable?"

Gelb says it is. Called "a magician" by admiring members of his board, Gelb sat in his office on a recent afternoon, surrounded by contemporary art created around Met productions -- another initiative -- and made questions disappear. One source of speculation has been the cost to the Met of the house's pioneering electronic media agreement with the musicians' union, which is what made the HD transmissions even possible. Gelb said it came to a single six-figure payment -- he declined to be more specific -- for the season; that sum is not included in the $1 million-per-transmission cost estimate.

And while production costs are high, there is no additional cost to get product into the movie theaters once the system is up and running. The standard distribution deal involves a split of the box office gross. The Met's share is 50 percent of each $22 ticket. If 170,000 people saw "La Bohème," and half that number saw "Peter Grimes," "you do the math," Gelb says. Even factoring in the additional payment to the union, the company covered its costs.

The distributors of "alternative content" don't even need numbers as high as Gelb's to see an advantage. The San Francisco and La Scala moviecasts are in fewer theaters and don't have the built-in advertising the Met gets from its weekly radio broadcasts, which reach 2.5 million people. Emerging Pictures, La Scala's distributor, has gotten aggregate audiences of around 15,000 for individual broadcasts. "We're very happy," says Giovanni Cozzi, the president of Emerging Pictures. "We're making money. I'm ecstatic about it."

Another reason for the lower draw is that the La Scala and San Francisco broadcasts are taped rather than live. But distributors actually see this as an advantage, since it offers theater owners the freedom to schedule performances when they want. In fact, that is one of the whole ideas behind the "alternative content" concept.

"It's been a Holy Grail as to what you do with the theater during the five days of the week when it's not peak time," says Patrick Corcoran, director of media and research for the National Association of Theater Owners. "Almost anything you bring in is added value to the movie theater." Ballet is the next frontier: Both Emerging Pictures and the Royal Opera/Opus Arte group (which is already broadcasting to Canada, and is about to add screens in the United States) are focusing heavily on dance as well as opera.

While the goal of the commercial distributors is obvious -- to make money -- the goal of opera houses in this new venture appears less certain. Although the HD cinecasts may appear to be a potential revenue stream for a nonprofit organization -- "Some members of my board think this is a financial answer," Gelb says -- the Met general manager warns against seeing them as more than "a self-sustaining marketing tool."

"The purpose is not so that the Met can diversify," he says. "It is designed to create greater interest in the Met itself."

There is also a vague idea that movie-theater transmissions serve as outreach to new audiences, playing a function similar to live opera transmissions on outdoor screens in Times Square or the National Mall. For its own experiment with simulcasts, the WNO went to schools, free of charge, rather than a paying audience; next season, the Met is expanding its own free pilot program to New York City schools to a national level. But the anecdotal evidence suggests that a majority of the paying audience are already opera fans -- exactly the audience the commercial distributors hope to target, even as the opera companies dream of tilling new ground.

The fusion of opera and commercial enterprise may require a kind of rethinking of the genre that not everyone is qualified to undertake. (Gelb's sound understanding of the media business is perhaps unique.) Not all content is created equal; not every production deserves to be captured for the screen; and the requirements of opera will never exactly coincide with those of film, which can transmit an exciting, up-close perspective, but never, quite, the visceral thrill of live voices singing in the same room as the audience.

Every opera administrator, of course, is watching the simulcast trend with considerable interest -- although not every one is ready to jump on the bandwagon. In Washington, Mark Weinstein, the opera's new executive director, says that while efforts are underway to raise money for another Mall simulcast this season, he is delaying plans for any kind of expanded simulcast.

"I've been a technology follower," he says. "The first people in the market -- the Met, San Francisco -- they're spending a fortune on inventing this stuff. I'm waiting until the price falls to something very inexpensive. Then I will thank Peter Gelb and others for showing me how to do it for less than one-tenth of what it's costing them."