OUTREACH FANS OPERA'S FLAMES STATEWIDE Edition

• Published in: The Hartford courant
• Main Authors: Reyna, Bessy, Bessy Reyna is a free-lance writer whose column appears monthly. To leave her a comment in English or Spanish, call 860-241-3165. Or e-mail her at bessy_reyna@hotmail.com
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hartford, Conn Tribune Interactive, LLC 19.01.2007
• ISSN: 1047-4153; 2641-3892

That Saturday, filled with excitement, I headed to the sold-out performance at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford. I kept thinking of my father, to whom I owe my passion for opera. He loved to have me join him on Sundays in the living room of our small apartment in Panama City to listen to Opera Para La Familia Istmena on the radio. Like many opera lovers around the world, despite never having seen a live opera, he could recount the stories by heart and hum and whistle the music. He never felt the electric sense of sitting among hundreds of opera-lovers sharing their delight. He never felt the thrill of joining a chorus of spontaneous bravos following a wonderfully moving performance of a famous aria. Last week, however, I learned of an exciting new program put on by New York's Metropolitan Opera. In a stroke of genius, the Met's new general manager, Peter Gelb, has joined with cutting -dge motion picture exhibition companies to use high tech to bring opera to the masses. The Met has begun to transmit high-definition satellite broadcasts of live performances to moviehouses equipped with HD projection systems in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan.