Ever since the Metropolitan Opera set the standard for simulcasting with its Live in HD broadcasts—and made more than a little money doing so—arts organizations around the world have been getting tech savvy. Lincoln Center beamed Neil Patrick Harris, Stephen Colbert, and the cast of Company into movie theaters around the world last summer, taking the rarefied air out of a limited four-night run. The Berliner Philharmoniker maintains a digital concert hall, and Seattle’s On the Boards uses multiple HD cameras to film its experimental theater, creating a whole new kind of art for ontheboards.tv.

We can experience the Bolshoi Ballet and London’s National Theatre for a third of the price at SIFF Cinema—and just this weekend, Seattle Opera entered the HD arena with its first-ever (free!) simulcast, of opening night of Madama Butterfly.

Let’s call it what it is: a democratization of high art. The Groundling pit at the Globe Theatre. And I’m a proud Groundling. I would never say these broadcasts replace the thrill of a live performance, but have you heard Dolby digital sound these days? With the help of high-quality cameras and sound equipment, life (in HD) looks fantastic; it offers an extreme close-up of the opera, the ballet, and the theater, and a chance to travel when budget and schedule don’t allow it. Plus, the broadcasts will (hopefully) attract that all-too-elusive “new audience” simply by being more accessible.

But some people fear the digital boom is the undoing of art itself. In Zachary Woolfe’s The Screen Can’t Hear When You Yell ‘Bravo’ in this Sunday’s New York Times, critic Marcel Prawy is quoted saying, “Opera in general can only be properly enjoyed when audience, orchestra, and stage form a compact community.” Woolfe then adds: “An image, in high-definition, 3-D or any other permutation, creates only the illusion of intimacy. It is a cooler, more detached art form.”

What do you think? Did you see the Madama Butterfly simulcast at KeyArena last weekend? Is simulcasting just a trend, or a way to save the arts?