Opera The HD video opera transmissions are presented via the same HD digital cinema projectors used for major Hollywood films. European opera houses and festivals including the Royal Opera in London, La Scala in Milan, the Salzburg Festival, La Fenice in Venice, and the Maggio Musicale in Florence have also transmitted their productions to theaters in cities around the world since 2006, including 90 cities in the U.S. The emergence of the Internet has also affected the way in which audiences consume opera. In 2009 the British Glyndebourne Festival Opera offered for the first time an online digital video download of
La Scala orchestra pit had not yet been built. Above the boxes, La Scala has a gallery—called the "loggione"—where the less wealthy can watch the performances. The gallery is typically crowded with the most critical opera aficionados, known as the loggionisti, who can be ecstatic or merciless towards singers' perceived successes or failures. For their failures, artists receive a "baptism of fire" from these aficionados, and fiascos are long remembered. For example, in 2006, tenor Roberto Alagna was booed off the stage during a performance of "Aida". This forced his understudy, Antonello Palombi, to quickly replace him mid-scene without time to change