Taking a page from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the San Francisco Opera has announced it will begin screening its productions in cinemas.
It is not the only opera house to eye the potential of bringing its shows to the silver screen following the huge success of the Met's cinema venture.
In the U.K., the Glyndebourne Opera Festival is making plans to screen its productions next year and the Royal Opera House in London is preparing to follow suit.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Opera announced a partnership with digital entertainment distributor The Bigger Picture to present six operas annually.
So far, 175 U.S cinemas have agreed to show the high-definition videos, but no announcement was made about release in Canada.
The first production, to be screened next March, will be Puccini's La Rondine, in a staging earlier this fall that featured the San Francisco Opera debut of Angela Gheorghiu.
While the Met productions are simulcast, all the San Francisco operas will be recorded and edited. Each could be screened up to four times in cinemas.
Other productions to come this season include Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila, Mozart's The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni and Puccini's Madama Butterfly.
The Royal Opera House has negotiated an agreement with its unions to allow 12 operas to be screened in cinemas and 14 to be recorded.
Royal Opera on YouTube
No agreement with U.K. cinemas has yet been announced, but in the meantime, the ROH is issuing video clips on YouTube.
The company has posted two dozen video clips, including trailers for opera and ballet productions, documentary segments and snippets of past performances.
ROH, also called Covent Garden, bought the Opus Arte DVD label this year and has been releasing current works via podcasts on its website.
La Scala in Milan, Italy, is already creating high-definition broadcasts of its productions, with seven proposed over the coming year.
The first, Aida, was shown this month in U.S. cinemas. Some of the operas will be from current productions at Venice's La Fenice opera house.
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