Fathom Events and the Metropolitan Opera have renewed The Met: Live in HD Performances series, expanding a cultural tradition that has brought dozens of performances from the Met Theater at Lincoln Center live to theater screens across the country since 2006.
The partnership between the nation’s largest performing arts organization and leading distributor of juvenile cinema will be renewed for three more years, through the 2025-26 season, culminating in the 20th anniversary of “Live in HD.”
The announcement comes three weeks before the December 10 broadcast of Live in HD The Hours, directed by Kevin Potts, based on Michael Cunningham’s novel and the 2002 film of the same title. The Met presents the world premiere of the work.
The partnership, which began in 2006 with fewer than 100 theaters, has grown to an average of 725 theaters and an estimated audience of more than 580,000 annually, according to representatives for both organizations.
The Fathom-Met deal saw total revenue exceed $205 million, which means nearly 10 million tickets sold, according to Ray Nutt, CEO of Fathom Events. diverse. Fathom with The Met consistently ranks among the top 10 box office hits in the event’s history, according to Comscore data. The Met now accounts for half of Fathom Events’ live event box office revenue.
“The Met is a cultural touchstone and one of the most recognized global performing arts brands,” Nutt added. “Not everyone has access to Lincoln Center, and this has been a great way to expand the audience for the Met, and ours. We look forward to continuing to work with the Met to bring more high-quality shows to audiences across the country.”
Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met, said the innovative partnership with Fathom “brings the beauty and power of opera to millions of people who would not normally have access to it. We are grateful to have such an excellent partner at Fathom and look forward to continuing our shared mission of making opera world-class.” Available to movie audiences throughout the United States and abroad.
The deal with Fathom began during Gelb’s first season with the Met, and it blossomed under him.
“It was an experiment, more of a marketing exercise than anything else,” says Gelb. diverse. “The hope was that by moving Saturday mornings to cinemas, we could strengthen the bond between the museum and its audience when they are not in the opera house. It became for us a huge success story. In two years we not only broke even, we made a significant amount of the bottom line to our bottom line.”
“The Hours” is one of seven new Met productions to perform in the 2022-23 season, including the opening act “Live in HD,” the Met premiere of Cherubini’s “Medea.” Other new productions are Giordano’s “Fedora” (January 14); Wagner’s “Lohengrin” (March 18); “Hero” Terrence Blanchard (April 29); Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” (May 20) and “Dei Zuperflute” (June 3). All performances will be on Saturdays and will be broadcast live from the Met Theater.
The HD season will also feature performances of Verdi’s “Falstaff” (April 1) and Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” (April 15). A special performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” will take place on December 3. Repeat performances of each opera will take place on the Wednesday after the Saturday live performances.
The Metropolitan Opera’s programs originated on radio in 1931, and have been broadcast on more than 300 radio stations in the United States. The organization experimented with television broadcasting in the 1940s and 1950s, and in 1977 launched the “Live From the Met” spin-off series on PBS.
The “Live in HD” series makes the Met the only arts organization with an ongoing global series of this scale making it the premier provider of alternative cinema content. The United States is the largest single market, Gelb says, although roughly 70% of the series’ audience is outside the United States, across 11 different time zones around the world.
Meanwhile, Fathom is among the largest content distributors for movie theaters in North America. It is owned by AMC Entertainment, Cinemark Holdings, and Regal, a subsidiary of Cineworld Group. “Juvenile cinema has changed the way movie theaters operate over the years, in a way that’s absolutely necessary,” says Knott.
(Pictured: The Metropolitan Opera performing “La Traviata” on November 5, 2022)
[ad_2]
