PARIS (AFP) — From "Met" operas to Elton John to theatre, the performing arts are drumming up new revenue and widening audiences by taking live acts to screens worldwide.
Leader in the field was New York's famed Metropolitan Opera, which for its 2006-2007 season launched an ambitious scheme offering "live" high definition transmissions at the cinema of some of its best nights at the opera.
The scheme was an instant success.
A Met study early this year said more than 900,000 people attended the second season of its "Met Live in HD" performances in cinemas, which attracted newcomers to opera while increasing interest in attending live performances.
Now the Met's upcoming third "Live in HD" season is playing in 850 cinemas in two dozen countries and is billed as coming soon to Argentina, Croatia, Latvia, Slovakia and South Africa.
The programme, part of a broader Met plan to open the rarefied world of opera to a wider audience, set its French operator CielEcran thinking.
After selling 10,000 cinema tickets for Puccini's "La Boheme" and Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment", the company came up with the idea of moving Elton John and his "Red Piano" tour from one of Paris' biggest concert venues to around 100 cinemas across Europe.
"Artists used to say to us, 'I'm on tour so if there's a screening of the concert no one will buy tickets to see me live'. But we tell them 'It's all the contrary, there'll be more buzz over your concert'", the head of CielEcran, Marc Welinski, told AFP.
"For Elton John, there were 15,000 more spectators than those who went to see him live," added Welinski, whose company next March is screening a theatre show featuring top French comics.
"In the current context, in which people are wondering how they're going to finance music, performing arts, or opera, we think we are on the right track."
In France, some of the biggest cinemas have signed on.
Eric Meyniel, who heads the Kinepolis chain of seven multiplexes, said "we are happy for three reasons. The sound and image are good, the films fill up the cinemas, and they keep the public happy, giving us the opportunity to relate to the audience differently."
But the head of the Paris Opera was less enthusiastic.
"I think re-transmissions in cities where there are no opera houses is a good thing," Gerard Mortier told AFP.
"But there is no point in screening the Met on the Champs-Elysees for example, in a city where 1.2 million people go to the opera regularly."
A Paris "Met Live" screening, he said, "is great advertising for the Met, but not great for the opera."
An added danger, he went on, was that cinemas would tend to go each time for "blockbuster" operas such as "Lucia di Lammermoor" or "Madame Butterfly".
But Welinski countered that offering performance arts at the cinema, which is a halfway house between televised performances and live acts, had its positive side.
"By using a big screen we offer collective emotion, which is extremely important in these hard times," he said.
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