BERLIN — Since the Metropolitan Opera began broadcasting live to movie theaters, in 2006, companies from the Bolshoi to the Komische Oper Berlin have seen digital distribution as crucial to positioning themselves internationally. Only a handful of players have the standing and resources to create for cinema, and many organizations in Europe turn to free web streaming, but never before have opera houses had such freedom to produce their own content.

The Met broadcasts to cinemas in 70 countries. The Royal Opera House in London relays to cinemas in 51 countries, while the Paris Opera is present in movie theaters in 18 countries. The Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin recently transmitted a production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” to French cinemas and plans a live broadcast of one production next season (last year, the house also began streaming on its own website and in collaboration with broadcasting partners).

Institutions from the Glyndebourne Festival to the Salzburg Festival have partnerships with the online platform medici.tv, which last year celebrated its 10th anniversary and has about 280,000 registered users. Stingray Classica officially starts within the network of Amazon Prime Video in June, featuring such organizations as the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Royal Opera House, while Opera Vision offers free streams from more than 20 houses across Europe.

The flood of offerings is a result of reduced coverage on public television, an unstable recording industry and the low cost of producing for the web. While a cinema broadcast involves filming methods that are more sophisticated than even those of television, a typical stream can be executed with about a third of production costs.