IStock Photo 8135386 © HalEdwards

For many opera houses, the fat lady has already sung. Once a major form of popular entertainment, opera, much like its cousin classical music, has become marginalized from popular culture. Can it survive the digital revolution?

Operas are long, especially for electronic-age attention spans. And they're expensive to stage, resulting in high ticket prices. Today's opera companies, if they are to survive, must not only mount productions, but educate and develop future audiences. Between 2000 and 2005, the average age of Metropolitan Opera subscribers rose from 60 to the traditional retirement age of 65, and a year later the New York City Opera was filling only 60% of its seats. The odds an adult will attend a classical music or opera performance in a year are 1 in 23.77. That's about the same odds a woman will attend an NBA game in a year, 1 in 23.58.

Today many people see opera as something outside of their own experience— a rarefied art that requires special knowledge to appreciate. It’s hard to blame them. Even if the libretto is being sung in English (which it often isn't), and even if subtitles are provided on the backs of seats (getting familiar with the story ahead of time helps), there is still a feeling that the experience is reserved for people who know if a high C is on key and understand that La Bohème is meant to refer to gypsies.

With all that, opera seems to be holding on. About 6.6 million adults went to an opera in 2002, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, which also reported a slight (though statistically insignificant) uptick in attendance by young adults (PDF) from 20 years before. Of the more than 110 member companies of the advocacy group OPERA America, a quarter of them formed since 1980.

For those without easy access (or enough cash), companies from New York to Milan are broadcasting live performances in high definition to movie theaters and schools, using the newest technologies to spread this centuries-old form of music theater. Seeking to get the most possible use out of their facilities, movie houses have welcomed the broadcasts, first from New York City's Metropolitan Opera, and now from Milan's La Scala and Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu as well. It's a classic example of going where the people are—in this case, the local multiplex. In spite of rising ticket prices and increased competition from video games and Internet-centered entertainment, the odds a person 12 or older has gone to the movies in the past three months are 1 in 1.69 (59%). Even if most of us don't know our Mozart and Wagner, we know where to find the big screen.

Some 920,000 people attended the Met's 2007 "Live in HD" simulcast series, with eight performances grossing $18.3 million worldwide, nearly three quarters of that in North America. Small change compared to the take from one new blockbuster movie, but it shows the demand for opera has outlasted the physical presence of the art form in many cities. Hundreds of venues, from movie theater chains like AMC to independent houses, are participating in the series' fourth season (2009-2010) in over 40 countries.

These special live events bring to mind the boxing championships that used to play in movie houses decades ago, and which are also coming back to movie theaters, now in HD. Can cartoon shorts be far behind?

Looney Tunes or no, the Met's pioneering HD Live in Schools program is in full swing. With some 12,000 students, parents, and teachers involved, it beams popular favorites like Bizet's Carmen and Puccini's Turandot via satellite to a group of New York City schools and eighteen other school districts across thirteen states, aiming to raise the next generation of opera-goers.

So, about that fat lady…maybe it's not time to bring out the old dame just yet.