Opening-night simulcast of opera "Carmen" at Independence Mall

In its season-opening production of Carmen, Opera Company of Philadelphia is preparing for its close-ups - on a 40-foot screen at Independence Mall. Eight cameras inside the Academy of Music on Friday will beam the opera eight blocks east. And since artists don't go into the opera profession because they don't like being noticed, the cast welcomes the technological invasion.

"I love the concept of having a video camera on my face. You get much more detail," said mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham, who is singing the title role in her 30th Carmen production. "I always work with nuance ... facial expressions that are so small that they're missed by people in the opera house. My whole acting approach derives from nuance."

Like most performing-arts institutions, Opera Company of Philadelphia has been keen to break into digital media for a number of years; two seasons back, it tried to assemble a Madama Butterfly simulcast on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But never did the company plan to follow in the footsteps of the Metropolitan Opera's movie-theater simulcasts, which have a $1 million-plus price tag. A more community-oriented local simulcast, says OCP general director David Devan, required only $300,000 in grants.

The hope is that this will begin a fall tradition. "We're doing this as an annual cultural season opening," he says.

The choice of Carmen is obvious: Besides having some of the greatest tunes in all of opera, the story of a renegade soldier obsessed with a sexy gypsy needs no dramaturgic apologies some 137 years after it was written. When the Norwegian National Opera held a local outdoor simulcast of Carmen, for example, thousands braved winter weather for the three-hour show.

Such precedents don't necessarily assure success in Philadelphia. Though the Met movie-theater simulcasts have been a big hit here, the Philadelphia Orchestra's underpromoted outdoor simulcast at the Piazza at Schmidts in 2010 attracted only a handful of viewers.

Still, says Devan, "opera is tailor-made for this stuff. We're the original multimedia art form. We learned that you basically have to throw everything you've got behind this. If we do a simulcast, we need to make it a big civic event. You want the city to revel in it. A lot of companies will add performances of Carmen because Carmen sells. We decided to put more resources behind the simulcast."

Though not mandatory, advance registration is requested for simulcast attendance though the OCP website, www.operaphila.org. Among the incentives are a free phone app that promises news of any breaking developments - and also allows first-time operagoers to be located for future marketing purposes. So far, about 2,500 have registered. Attendees should bring blankets or low-slung chairs; free seat cushions will be offered to early arrivals. An $11 picnic supper can be reserved. In the event of hurricanes or earthquakes, the simulcast will take place the following night.

The first hour, from 7 to 8 p.m., will feature pretaped interviews with principal cast members, all of whom except tenor David Pomeroy (Don Jose) have long histories with Philadelphia audiences. Ailyn Perez, who sings Micaela, graduated from the Academy of Vocal Arts; Jonathan Beyer, a Curtis Institute graduate, portrays bullfighter Escamillo.

Perhaps the most dynamic metamorphosis witnessed by local audiences has been that of its sinewy star, mezzo-soprano Shaham, who has become the Carmen of choice for companies worldwide.

Arriving at Curtis in 1991 from Israel, she was pudgy and swathed in goth-style jewelry; by the time she graduated in 1998, she had made her professional debut in 1994 with OCP, singing Zerlina in Don Giovanni. More recently, she returned to sing Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 1 ("Jeremiah") with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and German art-song concerts with former music director Christoph Eschenbach.

Outside Philadelphia, however, she sings almost nothing but Carmen. "Opera companies know they can blindly hire me with no rehearsal, and they'll get the product. Vocally, it feels very comfortable and reliable for me," she says. "Welcome to my real world!"

And as Carmen productions go, this one is unusually real; the edition uses the original spoken dialogue, as opposed to sung recitatives added after composer Georges Bizet's death. Directed by David Gately and designed by Allen Charles Klein, it also hews to tradition. "Carmen doesn't wear roller skates; Escamillo doesn't come down in a parachute," says simulcast director Bruce Bryant, referring to the fashion for updating.

That doesn't mean the production automatically translates well to the big screen. With eight cameras, roughly 1,000 shots need to be devised beforehand in a 25- to 30-page shooting script that's assembled during the final rehearsals. Stage director Gately is anticipating the adjustments that need to be made for the camera. When Carmen is tied up, the knot has to be real. When the wine is poured, the spout will be hidden because nothing really comes out of the bottle.

"You can get away with things onstage that you can't get away with in close-ups. You see wig lines, battle makeup that looks great onstage, but cheesy on camera," Bryant says. "Sometimes, I have to back off just a little bit and not be so tight on certain people so that we don't reveal all of that."

Not everything can be predicted. "In the last production of Carmen, I had to break a plate and got bloody every night," says Shaham. "I'm not supposed to bleed when I dance for Don Jose, but when I snapped the plate, it cut me. You have to live with it."

Even if the simulcast goes as well as possible, there's no chance of a future life on home video. That could happen with future OCP productions from the Perelman Theater, says Devan, but at the moment, the company's agreement with the artists is that the simulcast has no commercial potential and won't be preserved in any form - unless temporarily for the rain date.

Thus, whether in the Academy of Music or on Independence Mall, the performance will truly be a one-time-only event - and not necessarily the same experience in both places. The former has the immediacy of being there. But the latter has close-ups.

"We use sports lenses that can get very close," Bryant says. "If you're in the theater and the diva sheds a tear, you might be able to see that. But with our lens, you'll see her heart break."

Mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham talks about her many Carmens at www.philly.com/shahamEndText

Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.