In an effort to make New York's Metropolitan Opera as electronically available as the New York Yankees are to its fans, movie theater screenings of six live Met Saturday matinees will begin nationwide Dec. 30 with “The Magic Flute.”
“Opera fans are as fanatical about opera as baseball fans are about baseball,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said when his company announced plans to screen the six performances earlier this year.
The screenings are a first in Met history.
(Saturday Met matinees during the 2006-7 season can still be heard live on radio beginning Dec. 9. and ending May 5. Locally, they'll be heard on XLNC/FM 90.7.)
In San Diego County, “The Magic Flute” can be seen at 10:30 a.m. at the AMC Mission Valley 20 (in the Mission Valley shopping center) and at the Regal Mira Mesa Stadium 18 (10733 Westview Parkway, San Diego). The two venues will screen all Met performances through April 28.
On Jan. 6, the Regal UA Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego (at Horton Plaza shopping center) will join the AMC Mission Valley 20 and Regal Mira Mesa for the telecast of “I Puritani” at 10:30 a.m. After this, the UA Horton Plaza will carry the remaining four Met performances.
Seating at each movie theater multiplex will be limited. Tickets are $15 for children and $18 for adults for each screening and can be purchased on the Met's Web site, www.metoperafamily.org, or at participating theaters' box offices.
Other Met movie theater performances (all at 10:30 a.m.) are “The First Emperor” (Jan. 13), “Eugene Onegin” (Feb. 24), “The Barber of Seville” (March 24) and “Il Trittico” (April 28). The latter will be directed by Jack O'Brien, artistic director of San Diego's Old Globe Theatre.
S.F. Met-less
As unbelievable as this may sound, the Met screenings will not be shown anywhere in San Francisco, the home of arguably the nation's second most prestigious and adventurous opera company in America after the Met.
There are no movie theaters in San Francisco equipped with satellite-based digital high-definition (HD) projection systems (and surround sound) to carry the Met telecasts. San Franciscans will have to go to a movie theater multiplex in Dublin – about 30 miles east of San Francisco – if they want to see all six Met screenings. After “The Magic Flute” and “I Puritani,” a multiplex in Emeryville (adjacent to Berkeley) will join the Met schedule, but screening just the remaining four operas.
So, who says San Diego is a cultural wasteland?
More arts voting
An official of Americans for the Arts, which recently reported the passage of 10 arts-related ballot measures on Nov. 7, says the organization was not aware of a measure that was defeated in Bernalillo County, N.M.
“It was not part of our original post-election analysis,” said Nina Ozlu, executive director of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund. “In advance of election day, we make every attempt to scan for these types of ballot measures in thousands of communities across the country in order to help support passage; however, it is impossible to state with any certainty that no other ballot measures impacting the arts took place elsewhere.”
In Bernalillo County, 56 percent of voters rejected a “Quality of Life Initiative.” Voters were asked to approve an increase in the gross receipts tax of 3/16th of 1 percent (or less than a penny for every five dollars spent), to provide $30 million per year to benefit hundreds of arts organizations in the county.
Also of note, Ozlu said that since its post-election report Americans for the Arts has learned that an arts ballot measure in Dallas passed after all votes had been confirmed. Proposition 5 passed there with 69 percent. It will allocate $60 million to support cultural facilities throughout the city.
Preston Turegano: (619) 293-1357; preston.turegano@uniontrib.com
