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By Matthew Westphal
02 Jul 2007
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The Metropolitan Opera's first season of high-definition simulcasts into cinemas has proven so successful that other major houses are already looking into launching similar programs of their own. London's Royal Opera House (Covent Garden) and the Opéra national de Paris are making tentative plans for movie theater simulcasts, but the first company to announce specific plans is the Glyndebourne Festival Opera.
This fall the Odeon Cinemas chain in the U.K. will present high-definition broadcasts of three Glyndebourne productions in several English cities and in the Welsh capital, Cardiff.
The presentations will be on the last Thursday of September, October and November; confirmed cities so far are London, Tunbridge Wells (Kent), Brighton, Oxford, Guildford (Surrey), Harrogate (Yorkshire), Manchester and Cardiff. Tickets will be £7.50.
The operas, recorded in high-definition audio and video at Glyndebourne's summer festival, will be Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (September 27), Mozart's Così fan tutte (October 26) and a third work yet to be selected (November 29). If the first three cinema broadcasts are popular, according to The Times of London, more will be scheduled.
Glyndebourne general director David Pickard told The Times that the cost to the company for the broadcasts is "next to nothing," since the festival has already secured digital reproduction rights from its performers in order to produce DVDs of its productions. Artists will share in any profits, but those aren't expected to be great: "I don't think any of us is going to get wealthy from £7.50 tickets," said Pickard, "but that isn't the point. We're saying to the world, 'We're proud of what we do at Glyndebourne'."
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