Local opera fans and music lovers will be able to watch world-class opera on the movie screen for the first time in Singapore this month.

Cinema operator Golden Village has just begun screening of Metropolitan Opera’s “The First Emperor” in high definition digital film in cinemas since Sept. 20. Tickets to the screening are $15 each. 

“The First Emperor,” written by Academy Award-winner Tan Dun, is staged by film director Zhang Yimou. 

The original production was staged live and filmed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The filmed version has since been screened worldwide in the cinemas of United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. 

Seet Khiam Keong, senior lecturer of NUS theatre studies department, said in an e-mail interview that such initiatives will introduce the “high art of opera to a mass audience weaned on popcorn entertainment.”

Seet added the merger of theatre and film would enhance the features of both film and opera.

“Just as film can borrow from the conventions of theatre, an opera meant for the stage could have new resonance and a whole new set of audience by being adapted for the big screen,” he said.

Fu Kailing, a first-year theatre studies major, agreed.

“It’s like mixing the media of high art and commercial art,” Fu said. “I think it’s good because opera is normally thought of as inaccessible.” 

“The First Emperor,” which stars tenor Plácido Domingo, is a contemporary Chinese opera sung in English. While some may not be used to watching a Chinese opera sung in English, Roberta Chin, executive director of the Golden Harvest Entertainment Holdings Limited, said she believes that would not be the case for Singaporeans. 

“I think the Singaporean audience is sophisticated, so I think they will be most open to opera presented like this,” Chin said.

In addition, Chin said, having an opera on screen makes it more convenient for Singaporeans to watch a “world-class performance.” 

“It provides an opportunity for people to watch a show from the metropolitan opera without leaving the country,” she said. 

Fu, who had previously paid $50 for a ticket to watch another opera, “Madame Butterfly,” also said it is cheaper and more convenient for her to catch the opera in cinemas. 

“It’s a good thing that ‘The First Emperor’ is so much more affordable and it is sung in English,” Fu said. 

However, Chua Weiming, a third-year business major who was present at the Sept. 5 screening of “The First Emperor,” said he still prefers theatre to film.

“It’s visually impressive but the magic of the opera is somewhat lost within the cinema screens,” Chua said. 

Watching an opera on film is not as “visually appealing as watching the real actors on stage,” he added. 

“However, as a bonus, audiences get to see exclusive back-stage footages and also learn how the director and composer were inspired in the making of this epic creation,” Chua said. 

First-year theatre studies major, Talia Ong Tian Lu, said “film can never come to replace theatre” despite the more affordable price of watching opera on film. 

“The blurring of the lines between theatre and film is just part of the development of this whole film-industry thing. It’s inevitable people want to merge theatre and film,” Ong said. 

“It will just reach out to people who don’t watch theatre but won’t affect the number who are already very interested in theatre itself.”           

Seet said there should be no conflict of interest between film and theatre. 

“Certainly, film and theatre are completely different media, each with its own distinctive vocabulary,” Seet said. 

“What's enacted on stage is distinguished by its concrete, palpable presence,” he said, “and this sense of immediacy, of encountering performers in the flesh, as it were, cannot be replicated on screen, not even through the compensatory device of close-ups.”