An aged and infirm Mao Tse-tung (Robert Brubaker) rises from his chair during his meeting with Richard Nixon in the first act of Nixon In China. Also present at the meeting, from left to right, are Chou En-lai (Russell Braun), Mao’s three interpreters, Nixon (James Maddalena), and Henry Kissinger (Richard Paul Fink). Photos by Ken Howard, courtesy of the Metropolitan OperaST. JOHNSBURY — Opera, an urban art form if ever there was one, has come to the Northeast Kingdom.  For the past three years, Catamount Arts has been participating in the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series of broadcasts.

The programs allow local residents to get a glimpse of live opera without the trouble or expense of traveling to Lincoln Center on the west side of Manhattan.

The programs, which are also presented in Rutland and in Hanover, New Hampshire, have built a devoted following of subscribers.  Catamount has taken to scheduling rebroadcasts for the Saturday following the original presentation to accommodate overflow crowds.

Many people these days think of opera as a musty art form appealing only to well-heeled urbanites.  If that’s true now, it wasn’t always so.

For most of opera’s existence, it led a complex life, with all ranks of society represented in the multiple tiers of the opera house.  Well-off merchants occupied the seats on the orchestra floor, while the boxes that ringed the next level glittered with the jewels of the aristocracy.  The middle classes could buy seats in the higher balconies, and the top was the refuge of the common people.

This, with the exception of a titled class, was still very much the pattern at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in the 1960s.  While the main floor and the boxes of the old house, which was demolished in 1967, were filled with people in formal evening dress, the upper areas were filled with people in their best business attire.

While a fine performance by a singer might be greeted with applause from the more genteel depths of the house, it might evoke ecstatic pandemonium from the those in the heavens, near the theater’s gilded ceiling.

The shouting and applause became deafening if the singer, in taking her bows looked up to acknowledge her truest fans.

A good number of the people occupying the highest reaches of the opera house in those days were immigrants.  Some were able to tell tales of seeing great artists such as Enrico Caruso.

These denizens of the opera house’s upper reaches were a throwback to a time when opera was at the heart of popular culture.  That was a time when Giuseppe Verdi, the greatest of Italian opera composers, had to hold secret rehearsals before a premiere in Venice.  If not, his best tunes would have been on the lips of the city’s gondoliers (the IPods of the day) before the curtain went up on opening night.

Of course, some people liked opera for unexpected reasons.  The Paris Opera was frequented by a group of young blades who called themselves Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, (Janis Kelly) watch Haruno Yamazaki and Kanji Segawa, the lead dancers in a performance of The Red Detachment of Women, a revolutionary ballet, presented in their honor. Madame Mao, seated at a table behind Mr. Segawa, also watches attentively.the Jockey Club.  Many members of this club had mistresses among the ballerinas of the company.

Thus any composer who hoped for success in Paris had to include a ballet in his opera.  Of course, members of the Jockey Club were inclined to be late for the performance, so the ballet could not occur before the second act, lest a riot ensue.

Paris was an exception, though.  In the rest of the world — and opera was a global phenomenon with elegant houses rising from Cairo, Egypt, to Sydney, Australia — singing was the attraction.  The birth of phonograph recordings only made bigger stars out of the great singers.

Opera’s popularity made it a natural for the new technology of radio, and in 1931 the Metropolitan Opera began a series of Saturday broadcasts that continue today.  While there were occasional televised opera productions, broadcasters never became enthusiastic about devoting three or four hours to an opera performance that might appeal to only a small percentage of their audience.

When Peter Gelb took over the helm of the Metropolitan Opera in 2006 he began to reach out to new audiences.  The Live in HD series was one of his initiatives.

The broadcasts are not at all like being in the theater, but resemble a film version of a performance, complete with close-up shots of the singers.  The sound, though, is excellent, and the backstage views during the intermissions, give a behind the scenes view that would otherwise be available to no one but a performer or stagehand.

These performances have proved popular and many of Catamount’s presentations have sold out.  In fact, there repeat performances have had to be scheduled to accommodate demand.

Another initiative was to schedule productions of new operas.  For most of the form’s existence, opera companies were expected to present new operas.  Older works were rarely revived and audiences expected novelty.

While opera composers never stopped composing, the Metropolitan Opera for many years shied away from new repertory.  That nervousness is ending as the company seeks to attract younger audiences.

New is relative, though.  The most recent Live in HD production was of a 24-year-old opera called Nixon In China.

Composed in the minimalist style by John Adams, the opera, as its name implies, relates the story of the president’s visit to China in 1972.

Many operas bring kings and queens on stage to examine them both as people and as representatives of larger forces in the world.

Some of these operas were considered dangerous by the authorities.  Verdi’s work was often censored by the authorities who feared a drama focused on the assassination of a nobleman might be an incitement to revolution.

Nixon In China, directed by Peter Sellars, sees revolutionaries and democratically elected leaders in the same way Verdi saw his kings and dukes, as human beings who are at the same time cogs in a complicated power structure.

In his meeting with Chairman Mao, President Nixon is over prepared, ready to recognize the most abstract reference made by the leader of China’s Communist Party.  Mao, on the other hand, has no interest in current events; he floats on a philosophic cloud, or is perhaps senile.

Pat Nixon strives to get close to the people she is brought to meet, but her only satisfying connection is fictitious when she confuses the suffering of a ballerina in one of Madame Mao’s revolutionary operas, with real happenings.

The Nixons innocently try to save the young woman from her oppressors, only to watch in bewilderment as their hostess waves Mao’s little red book and incites a riotous reenactment of China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution.

The ballet, which is a fine balance of the sublime and the ridiculous and features a cameo role for stage version of Henry Kissinger, was choreographed by Mark Morris.  Mr. Morris, like Mr. Sellars, is a notoriously mischievous serious artist.

On the eve of the Nixons’ departure from China, the weary principal characters head for their respective bedrooms, represented on stage by a simple row of beds.  Richard Nixon recalls the fear he felt while waiting for a Japanese air attack while serving in the Pacific during World War II.  Chairman Mao, on the other hand, remembers creating a successful revolution in China.

His Prime Minister Chou En-Lai, who, like Mao, was a dying man, is left to ask the opera’s final question, one that has relevance today.  “How much of what we did is good?”

It is a question that hangs in the air pulsating with John Adams’ swirling arpeggios, but even now lacks an answer.

Of course, Chou was the person who, when asked about the impact of the  French Revolution, replied, “It is too soon to say.”