Tom Galley, chief operations and technology officer of National CineMedia, describes the experience by saying: This audience includes current opera fans unable to get to New York City to see the shows in person and potential opera fans looking for an easy, affordable method of checking out a new art form. The simulcasts allow more people to experience the Met's performance offerings. The Met is also sponsoring free HD broadcasts into selected New York City public schools. Exhibiting the Met's performances in digital movie theaters is in line with other audience-expanding efforts by the Met such as radio broadcasts on Sirius Radio, iPod downloads, live streaming video on the Met website, and free opening night screenings in Times Square and at Lincoln Center.

The original idea for presenting operas in this way came from the new incoming general manager of the Met, Peter Gelb in late 2006. Its aims include building a larger audience for the Met and garnering excitement for arts at a local level. The series is broadcast to AMC Theatres, Cinemark, Cineplex Entertainment, Regal Entertainment Group (Regal Cinemas, United Artists and Edwards), Goodrich, Kerasotes, Marcus and National Amusements movie theaters as well as a series of independent venues such as arts centers and college campuses. Petersburg, a fashionable Parisian salon, and a picturesque villa in the Swiss Alps.To transmit the series via satellite simulcast in the US and Canada, the Met has partnered with Fathom Events.

Director David McVicar delivers a detailed and dramatic staging based around an ingenious fixed set that, like a Russian nesting doll, unfolds to reveal the opera's three distinctive settings, a palace in St. Soprano Rosa Feola is the Countess Olga, Fedora's confidant, and baritone Artur RucinÌski is the diplomat De Siriex, with Met maestro Marco Armiliato conducting. Soprano Sonya Yoncheva, one of today's most riveting artists, sings the title role of the 19th-century Russian princess who falls in love with her fiancee's murderer, Count Loris, sung by star tenor Piotr Becza‚a. Packed with memorable melody, showstopping arias, and explosive confrontations, Fedora requires a cast of thrilling voices to take flight, and the Met's new production promises to deliver.

Umberto Giordano's exhilarating drama returns to the Met repertory for the first time in 25 years.

Metropolitan opera cinemas