HOUSTON — The AMC Willowbrook 24 is 22 miles, or 30 minutes, northwest of Houston’s downtown opera house. And the neighborhood is no cultural hotbed. Opera fans who have traditionally had to go “to town” for Houston Grand Opera performances loved having Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD brought to the area.

“I was delighted Willowbrook 24 did this,” Harriet Brown, who drives into central Houston about three times a week to attend theater and other cultural events, said, “There’s no big production about dressing, parking, etc.”

Saturday’s sold-out showing of Bellini’s “I Puritani” also served as the overflow for people who couldn’t get tickets at the Marq*e 23, a movie theater that is closer to downtown and near zip codes that provide much of Houston Grand Opera’s audience.

Sue Morgan, a longtime opera fan, was one such viewer shut out of the Marq*e 23 early in the week. A friend in Colorado Spring, Colo. spoke highly of the Met’s broadcast of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” on December 31. So Ms. Morgan bought her ticket online and found a prime seat midway up the stadium seating.

“I was apprehensive,” she said during the second intermission. “In an opera house, it’s much better, but you get used to it. I’m enjoying the show.”

“I don’t want them to take it away,” area resident Christine Normand said. “I loved it — how could anyone not?”

The casually dressed audience was older than the crowd last weekend at the Marq*e 23 for “The Magic Flute,” but that could be expected. With three acts sung in Italian, “I Puritani” has an appeal less broad than the abridged English version of Julie Taymor’s production of “The Magic Flute.”

Otherwise, the crowd was similar, ranging from young adults who were just getting to know opera to well-versed longtime fans.

As the telecast began, the most remarkable difference from “The Magic Flute” at the Marq*e 23 was the intensity of the listening. The man rustling his popcorn bag soon stopped. The woman who couldn’t find her cell phone when it went off was mortified, a friend said.

And every time soprano Anna Netrebko or the other principals developed a musically riveting aria, the crowd was hushed — just as in the Wortham Theater Center, the home of Houston Grand Opera. The crowd essentially became a miniature live opera audience collectively hanging on every phrase or coloratura flourish.

The Willowbrook 24 audience applauded fitfully at all the right moments — but, then again, it was a movie theater. While very appreciative, Houston operagoers are generally not as demonstrative as the Met’s audience was at the “I Puritani” matinee.

Some hometown chauvinism showed through, too. The conductor of “I Puritani,” Patrick Summers, is music director of Houston Grand Opera. From his first entrance in the pit, he consistently got the most applause from obviously loyal local fans.

Before the telecast started, the theater’s staff encountered some sound problems. One employee stood at a side wall and relayed evaluations into his walkie-talkie.

But during the five-minute onscreen countdown to the start of the show — one of many audiencefriendly benefits of the telecast — the sound of audience noise and practicing musicians in the Metropolitan Opera House arrived in all its big, glorious HD clarity.

Mr. Ward is the classical music critic of the Houston Chronicle.