He is no Spider-Man, but Papageno held his own at the movies this season.
The Metropolitan Opera says its simulcasting of operas into theaters nationwide, which has sent ripples through the opera world, was so successful over the last five months that it will expand the program next season.
Peter Gelb, the company's general manager, said he expects the number of people who attend live Met performances in movie houses next season to match the cumulative audience for all 225 performances in the Met auditorium: about 800,000 people. Gelb also said he expects the series to make a profit, a word not often heard in the opera world.
He ascribed other benefits to the simulcasts this season. They increased attendance, although there is no hard evidence for this; brought excitement to the performers and other company members; and served as a powerful marketing tool, he said in an interview.
“This is considered by any standards to be a great success,” Gelb said of the simulcast series. “There was considerable skepticism about whether this would work.”
This season, the Met simulcast six operas live to movie theaters across the United States (including San Diego), Canada and a handful of other countries and added repeats (“Encores,” in its marketing language). For the first live show, “The Magic Flute” Dec. 30, about 21,000 people watched in front of 98 screens. For the last, “Il Trittico” April 28, 48,000 people watched in front of 248 screens.
In all, the Met sold 324,000 tickets worldwide at $18 each in the United States and more overseas, taking 50 percent of the proceeds and earning at least $3 million, as well as additional income from the sale of rights. Each simulcast cost $850,000 to $1 million to make. The Met had to use about $1 million in endowment money to make up the costs, but Gelb said that next year expanded showings and the sales of rights and DVDs should mean that the program will at least pay for itself, with a surplus likely.
Next year the Met hopes to double the number of theaters for each broadcast; increase the number of simulcast productions to eight; expand its foreign coverage, now including Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Britain and Japan, possibly to France, Italy, Belgium, Austria and Spain; and offer pay-per-view showings for a month after the live event.
The simulcasts certainly have the attention of other opera companies. Last month in Miami they were all the buzz at the annual conference of Opera America, a service organization for companies, said Marc A. Scorca, its president.
“There was a lot of wonderment about whether the transmissions will be the 21st-century equivalent to the radio broadcasts that began in the 1930s,” Scorca said. Opera managers also talked about whether theater transmissions will galvanize enthusiasm for opera and complement the performances of resident companies, he said.
While there was no evidence that the Met broadcasts have hurt ticket or subscription sales at local companies, Scorca added, some opera managers wondered whether they eventually would.
A half-dozen opera officials interviewed said they saw no potential negative effect on how productions might be cast or conceived when directors – and singers – knew they would be shown on a big screen.
“I do not now cast for the movies, nor do I ever intend to,” said Speight Jenkins, the general director of the Seattle Opera. Jenkins praised the simulcasts, which appeared in towns outside Seattle, as a way of exposing more people to the art form, but like other officials he emphasized that the best opera experience was a live one.
Already one company has followed the Met's lead. The Washington National Opera said last week that it would simulcast two productions next year, but to college campuses, with tickets free.
Local opera companies have used the Met broadcasts to try to drum up interest in their own performances.
