Night Waves - Opera on the Big Screen

As a film version of La boheme opens, starring Rolando Villazon, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss why operas are increasingly finding their way onto the big screen. Many major opera houses, such as Bayreuth, the Royal Opera House and La Scala, are now broadasting their operas live into cinemas. This comes in the wake of a new wave of operatic feature films, such as Kenneth Branagh's The Magic Flute. They ask if this trend is a sign that opera is working hard to shed its image as the most expensive and elitist of all art forms - and could cinemas prove crucial to opera's future survival?