More news of opera on the big screen

I just got wind that San Francisco Opera's movie theater screening series will start this weekend with Angela Georghiu in Puccini's La Rondine. It's a terribly wimpy distribution effort compared to the Met's movie theater series, and even compared to La Scala's screening series which has a few great locs in LA. There are no screening locations near the Los Angeles metropolitan area; the closest are San Diego (75 miles south) and Apple Valley (79 miles into the desert). But, since Georghiou's performance received such raves up in San Fran, I'm half inclined to drive out to San Diego for it anyway. There are a few other performances very worth driving down for: Mariusz Kwiecien in Mozart's Don Giovanni on April 12-15 and Patricia Racette in Puccini's Madama Butterfly on April 19-22. I just wish it wasn't so dang far away.

While clicking around, I also discovered that the Royal Opera House's HD screening series is also about to begin. The exciting thing about this series is that in addition to opera, there will be broadcasts of The Royal Ballet! They will start out in June with Frederick Ashton's The Tales of Beatrix Potter, filmed over Christmas this year, and the Royal's new production of The Sleeping Beauty with Alina Cojocaru, Federico Bonnelli and Marianela Nunez. Both of the recordings have already been shown on the BBC, but they are magnificent filmings that will surely look good on the big screen. The only info I could find though, was the local theater's schedule of performances. I could not for the life of me find it on the Royal Opera House's web page, nor on any combination of Google searches (only brief news articles indicating that HD cables had been installed in the ROH over a year ago). Hopefully, there will be more information coming soon, since the first ROH broadcast is La Fille du Regiment on March 19-20. And hopefully, there will be screening locations closer to me. Anyone have any more information?

So now there are four major international opera houses hopping on the movie theater bandwagon. Clearly, the Met has everyone beat in marketing, distribution and excitement. I mean, come on, I pay a whole lot of attention to finding arts performances and I only accidentally discovered the SFO and ROH broadcasts are starting in less than a week. What does the general public therefore know about the screenings? And the Met performances around here are sold out beyond capacity for every single screening, everyone in the arts is talking about them. Of course, very few opera companies have the marketing and organizational resources as the Met, but you won't be able to say that these movie theater screenings are a major trend in opera going unless anyone knows or cares about them.