Palace Amusement, local cinema company, is set to launch a new phase of operations with the broadcast of live performances of the opera, ballet, Broadway and West-End productions, concerts, and sporting events from international and local sources this weekend .

This will all be possible through the company's latest initiative, Alternative Content, which facilitates projections in 3D digital signals from a satellite, a hard drive, fibre optics or television transmission.

In introducing its Met Opera in HD season, Palace Amusement's Managing Director Douglas Graham, said the company has joined the ranks of the Metropolitan Opera's award-winning series of live transmissions to movie theatres around the world, which will feature 12 productions in the 2012/13 season.

The season premieres this Saturday, October 13, at 11:55 am at Carib 5, with L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love), starring Russian soprano, Anna Netrebko. There will be encore performances on Saturday, October 20 at Palace Multiplex in Montego Bay and Sunday, October 21, at Palace Cineplex in Liguanea, and Odeon Cineplex in Mandeville.

L'Elisir d'Amore, is directed by Bartlett Sher and conducted by Maurizio Benini. Netrebko headlines her second consecutive season-opening gala as the beautiful landowner Adina, with Matthew Polenzani as Nemorino, the simple peasant who falls in love with her. Mariusz Kwiecien sings Adina's arrogant fiancé, Sergeant Belcore, and Ambrogio Maestri will sing the role of the magic potion-peddling Doctor Dulcamara. "L'Elisir d'Amore is kind of two operas at the same time," according to Sher. "It's an opera that's a great entertainment, and it's an opera that has something else happening underneath. It's informed by when in Italian history it was written — you can see the early stirrings of a cry for independence."

Palace Amusement is now one of the 1900 theatres worldwide in this elite category and among the latest entrants along with Bolivia, Guatemala, India, Madagascar and Qatar. Graham has described the move as a bold investment, "at the worst time in living financial memory".

The Met: Live in HD, the world's leading provider of Alternative Cinema Content, has expanded to a record 1900 theatres in a 60 countries, making the Met the only arts institution with an ongoing global art series of this scale. The Met was the first arts company to experiment as an Alternative Content provider, beginning on a modest scale in 2006.