LJWorld.com

For the past several years, Don Marquis has made an annual pilgrimage to New York City to see a production by the Metropolitan Opera.

Now, he doesn’t have to travel so far.

Marquis has become a fan of the Met’s Live in HD series, which is beaming live Met performances to 850 theaters in 30 countries — including the Southwind 12, 3433 Iowa.

“In many respects, it’s like seeing a Met performance,” says Marquis, an organizer of the Lawrence Opera Guild. “It’s a lot better than listening on the radio, because you can see the performers, the staging and the action — that sort of thing. It’s almost as good as going to the opera. In some ways, it’s better because they show lots of close-ups.”

This is the third season for the high-definition broadcasts, and the first year for it to be shown in Lawrence. The operas typically are shown at noon on Saturdays, with some performances re-broadcast on Wednesdays.

“Nothing compares to experiencing live opera at the Met,” general manager Peter Gelb says in a Q&A provided by the opera company. “But by filming the performances and transmitting them into movie theaters, the Met is bringing live opera to more people than can ever be accommodated at the Met in any one season.”

Last year, the Live in HD drew 935,000 opera fans, essentially doubling the company’s paying audience. This year’s 11 performances, which started in September and run through May, are expected to top the 1 million mark.

According to a survey of two Live in HD sites conducted by Opera America last year, nearly 20 percent of respondents had not attended a live opera in the past two years, and of those people, more than a quarter had never been to a live opera.

That’s not the case for Marquis, who is a lifelong opera fan.

He loves going to the Met in person, but he’s not sure he misses out on much at the Southwind 12.

“With the HD performances, you see people up close,” says Marquis, a Kansas University philosophy professor. “Of course, you can see them too up close — it’s obvious when a 45-year-old woman is playing the role of a 16-year-old.”

But he adds: “In a way, the HD performances can be more moving simply because you can see much more of the expressions on the singers’ faces. So when the heroine is dying and the tenor is anguished, he looks really anguished.”

Ted Johnson, another Met Live in HD fan, agrees. Johnson, a retired KU professor, says he especially likes how the opera house is shown on the big screen before the curtain goes up, and how local audience members applaud after big arias and during the curtain call.

“You feel like you’re in the opera house itself,” he says.

Jon Ratzlaff, manager of the Southwind 12, says an average of 50 people have attended the Live in HD performances so far. The performances — which are subtitled in English — cost $22 to attend, or $20 for senior citizens.

“You definitely have to like the opera,” he says. “We’re just getting the word out slowly, but we hope it’s just the beginning.”

Johnson says he hopes the shows can attract a younger audience to the opera. And maybe, he says, it will convince them to attend live opera, such as those performed by KU.

“What we’d like to do is make sure the youngsters get involved in this,” he says.