Fathom Events, the Metropolitan Opera, and Opera America have renewed the “The Met: Live in HD” screening series, extending a cultural tradition that has delivered scores of performances from the Met’s stage at Lincoln Center directly to theater screens nationwide since 2006.
The partnership between the country’s largest performing arts institution and leading event-cinema distributor will be renewed for three more years, through the 2025–26 season, culminating in the 20th anniversary of the “Live in HD” program.
Three weeks before the 10th of December, this announcement was made “Live in HD” Transmission of a novel work “The Hours” Kevin Puts based the story by Michael Cunningham, and the 2002 film with the same title. World premiere staged performance by The Met.
Representatives from both companies said that the partnership, which began with less than 100 theaters in 2006, has now grown to 725 theatres on average and a combined audience of over 580,000 per year.
Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt says that the Fathom-Met deal generated more than $205 million, which is approximately 10,000,000 tickets. Variety. Fathom’s events with The Met consistently rank among the top-10 in box office on the event date, according to Comscore data. The Met now accounts for fully half of Fathom Events’ live-event box office revenue.
“The Met is a cultural touchstone and one of the most iconic global performing-arts brands,” Nutt was also added. “Not everybody can get to Lincoln Center, and this has been a great way to expand the Met’s audience, and ours. We look forward to continuing to work with the Met to bring more high-quality performances to fans around the country.”
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said the innovative partnership with Fathom “has brought the beauty and power of opera to millions of people who ordinarily would not have access to it. We are grateful to have such an excellent partner in Fathom and look forward to continuing our shared mission of making world-class opera available to cinema audiences throughout the United States and beyond.”
The pact with Fathom began during Gelb’s first season with the Met, which has prospered on his watch.
“It was an experiment, more of a marketing exercise than anything else,” Gelb tells Variety. “The hope was that we would, by transmitting Saturday matinees into cinemas, strengthen the bond between the Met and its audience when they weren’t in the opera house. It became, for us, a major success story. Within a couple of years we were not only breaking even but generating a significant amount of net revenue to our bottom line.”
“The Hours” It’s one of seven Met productions that will be shown in the 2022/23 season. “Live in HD” performance, the Met premiere of Cherubini’s “Medea.” The other new productions are Giordano’s “Fedora” (Jan. 14); Wagner’s “Lohengrin” (March 18); Terence Blanchard’s “Champion” (April 29); Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” (20 May) “Die Zauberflote” (June 3). All performances will take place on Saturday mornings, and broadcast live from the Met.
The HD season will also feature performances of Verdi’s “Falstaff” (April 1) and Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” (April 15). A special encore screening of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” The Dec. 3 presentation will take place. Following the Saturday live screenings, repeat performances are given on Wednesdays.
Metropolitan Opera broadcasts were first transmitted on radio in 1931. They are still heard on over 300 stations across the United States. It experimented with TV broadcasts during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1977, it launched occasional series. “Live From the Met” PBS.
It “Live in HD” The Met is the only institution in the arts with a continuous global series on this scale, making it an important provider of alternative cinema content. Gelb said that while the U.S. is America’s largest market, nearly 70% of series viewers are from outside the U.S. in eleven different time zones.
Fathom is a top North American distributor of movie theatre content. It’s owned by AMC Entertainment, Cinemark Holdings and Regal, a subsidiary of Cineworld Group. “Event cinema,” Nutt says, “has transformed the way that movie theaters operate over the years, in a very necessary way.”
(Pictured) The Metropolitan Opera performing “La Traviata” On Nov. 5, 2022