In a cramped backstage area at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, French mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch adjusts her 19th-century dress.
Around her are other singers, a costume assistant, two cameramen and a dozen stagehands ready to move a tree and a park bench to change the sets for the second act of Jules Massenet's Werther.
Koch smiles, breathes deeply and climbs a wooden staircase. A few seconds later, she is on stage with German tenor Jonas Kaufmann before a standing-room-only crowd in the 3,800-seat Met.
It's a special Saturday afternoon at New York's storied opera house, the focal point of Lincoln Centre. In the US and around the world, hundreds of thousands of fans are watching her on movie screens retransmitting the performance of the opera - adapted from a novel by Goethe - in real time and in high definition (HD).
"We will have at least between 200,000 and 250,000 people watching this live today," says the Met's general manager, Peter Gelb. "In fact, 67 per cent of our audience in movie theatres is outside of America. We are a truly global arts company. I don't think any other company can say that about themselves. We are an example of innovation."
The Met first offered HD retransmissions of its performances during the 2006-2007 season, with about 250 theatres participating in eight countries. ( The Met: Live in HD has been running in Hong Kong since 2009 and the programme is sponsored by the Foundation for the Arts and Music in Asia.)