I decide to attend the opera, with Raisinets and bonbons.

The sotto voce mumblings up and down the row concur that, in fact, besides price, this is “way better” than box or even front-row seats at the Met. That’s because 10 video cameras are beaming high-definition, live satellite images to the Burbank multiplex direct from the matinee performance at America’s top opera house.

From this vantage point, you can see the twitching nose hairs of Gerald Finley, world-class Canadian baritone, as he hits his heart-rending top notes. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified Mr. Finley's nationality.] You don’t need opera glasses to magnify the undulating tonsils of mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke as she belts out immortal quotations of Baudelaire – courtesy of the libretto penned by Peter Sellars.

The look and feel of live singing at such ultraclose range – projected in diamond-sharp detail large enough for King Kong – is viscerally overpowering, and possibly, to listen to some purists, damaging to real opera in the long run: They fret that the jumbo-sized Dolby version might supplant the old human-scale opera with real voices.

Hmmmm. In the short run, at least, this particular brush with opera is a lot less damaging to my pocketbook than the real thing – and 3,000 miles closer. And while the 21st-century music to “Doctor Atomic,” by contemporary composer John Adams, isn’t exactly toe-tappin’, it does expand my musical palette.

Not to mention waistline.

With an intermission and running length of three hours, 25 minutes, there’s ample time to run wild in the gustatory realm: pizza, hot dogs, Häagen Dazs. (The Met offers salmon and cream cheese, chicken breast and croissant, but you can’t take any of it back to your seat.)

I didn’t tell any of the snob wannabees here, but sacrificing the cash means sacrificing cachet as well. Adios to the aroma of musty mink and Chanel No. 5. Hola to fresh-buttered popcorn and sockless feet.

•••

I grew up reading the comic strip, “Bringing Up Father,” in which Maggie was always dragging her über-reluctant husband, Jiggs, to the opera on football Sundays. In the last frame, Jiggs was always sawing ZZZZZs while a buxom blonde in Viking horns and breastplate bellowed on some stage a football field away.

Jiggs would really hate this venue. With high-backed plush chairs, tiered stadium seating, and exquisite surround sound, there’s no escape, even if you want to. (Which I don’t.)

I’d seen two operas in the two weeks leading up to this – Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” from the mezzanine at Los Angeles Opera’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and Donizetti’s “Elixir of Love” from box seats at the San Francisco Opera House. Neither could compete – for the virtue or vice of cutting-edge technology, take your pick – in sensory clarity.

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