Media literacy and new entertainment venues: The case of opera in movie theatres

Abstract

Throughout its historical evolution, opera has undergone many structural changes. Lately, the genre has undergone a remarkable change as a form of mass entertainment because of cinema, but also because of the development of social networks, websites, forums, chats and blogs that opera houses and entities that support opera make available to consumers. All of this helps to create a new model of literacy and entertainment that is built from the codes of cinema. Currently, the projections of films depicting live opera performances in movie theatres around the world contribute to the paradoxes inherent to the digital society: they create a new star system, traditional informational media are questioned and new models of behaviour in front of a communicative and globalised art event, which has been taken away from the live show that opera as artistic synthesis had always been, are created. © 2013 Communication & Society.