Bringing People Together Through Opera

The Met movie theatre simulcasts have created a new, hybrid form of entertainment, says Philip Kennicott, and opera fans long since abandoned by the mass media finally have a way to recreate the days when companies like the Met used to tour across the country. “And so the scattered but substantial audience for a very old and elite art form is suddenly made manifest, to itself and to the rest of the world, by gathering in theaters designed for mass entertainment.”