NCPA production Nabucco will be showed at the NCPA International Opera Film Exhibition. [Photo/chncpa.org]

The eight foreign opera films selected from international opera theatres are completely different in style. The Metropolitan’s Carmen, La Bohemé and Don Pasquale manifest the top opera film companies' professional eminency; the Royal Opera House’s La Traviata, Tosca and Don Giovanni are all regarded as worldwide classic operas; the Paris Royal Opera’s Les Contes d'Hoffmann is filled with French beautiful rhythm and romantic imagination; while the Mariinsky Theatre's Iolanta, the last opera of Tchaikovsky, is showing in China for the first time.

From July 18, the selected films are to be released 214 times at cinemas in eight first-tier cities in China: Beijing, Jinan, Dalian, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu and Shenzhen. The Broadway has offered various ways to set-stamp purchase, which allows the audience to watch opera films at an affordable price of 40 yuan to 100 yuan.

It has become a hot tendency to watch opera films at the cinema in recent years. In 2006, the Metropolitan's opera first launched its program "Live broadcast of high-definition opera films', followed and imitated by Royal Opera House and Moscow Grand Theatre. Opera films have undoubtedly become an important way to link the theatre with its audience and to enlarge market influence.