In a landmark program, the Metropolitan Opera will broadcast live performances of six Saturday matinee operas in movie theaters around America, Canada, and Europe, the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, announced yesterday.

In most respects, the movie theater broadcasts, beginning with Julie Taymor’s “Magic Flute” on December 30, will receive the star treatment. They’ll be seen in high definition and heard in surround sound, via satellite feed.

But they won’t be broadcast in New York City. Or anywhere in the tristate area.

While the Met and its movie house distribution partners, National CineMedia, Cineplex Entertainment, and Odeon/UCI, plan to cover most other major American markets including Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C, Philadelphia will be the closest city to New York to offer such viewings, according to a Met representative, Peter Clark.

“We want to be careful about not cannibalizing our audience,” Mr. Gelb said. “Our Saturday matinees are the hottest ticket at the Met.”

“We want them to come to the performances,” the director of editorial and communications at the Met, Elena Park, said of New York audiences.

The venture, a first of its kind for a performing arts organization in any part of the world, according to the Met, is yet another manifestation of Mr. Gelb’s efforts to draw fresh, diverse audiences to an art form often characterized as stale and elitist.

The opera house’s three largest unions, Local 802, the American Guild of Musical Artists, and Local One, agreed to the deal after extensive negotiations. The opera company will also offer live streaming Webcasts of performances on its Website, starting with its 2006 season.

Mr. Gelb, who succeeded the longtime general manger Joseph Volpe, officially took reign August 1, and he has wasted no time executing his democratic vision. On August 16, he announced plans for a public dress rehearsal of the Met’s new production of “Madama Butterfly,” directed by Anthony Minghella, which will take place September 22. And earlier this month, the Met began a citywide, transit system-targeted marketing campaign to lure younger audience members to what have been, at least in recent years, less-than-capacity performances, and to remedy what Mr. Gelb calls a “gently declining box office.”

The latest plans dovetail with the populist efforts Mr. Gelb has espoused, and build on the Met’s 75 years of Saturday public radio broadcasts.

PBS, which will co-produce the broadcasts, will also show the performances on television following 30-day windows.