Tickets for the opening night of the 2008 Royal Opera House season in London, England, will be awarded only to readers of one of the city's notorious tabloids.

In a decision that has angered loyal opera fans, 2,000 passes to Mozart's Don Giovanni will be awarded in a lottery system to readers of the Sun newspaper.

While regular opera-goers often compete to pay up to $400 for the best seats on opening night, the ballot will award tickets at prices ranging from $15 to $60.

Financial support for the deal is being provided by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, a fund created by Royal Opera supporter Lady Hamlyn.

But reaction to the initiative, intended to bring in an audience that might not otherwise buy tickets, has been mixed.

"This Sun idea smacks of desperation to me,' said Andrew Clements, the Guardian's classical music critic.

"They've never done it for any other newspaper. It seems to me that making the first night exclusively for Sun readers is another ghettoization. It's like they are saying they can't come to Covent Garden on their own another time."

But many middle-class readers posted comments online welcoming the plan, saying they could not otherwise afford tickets.

"It's nice to see the higher arts being marketed to the common masses," said BBC reader Daniel Gray. "What has been forgotten was that opera was very much a part of popular culture when it was created. It's only in recent times that has seen opera elevated to this so called podium of higher culture."

The Sun newspaper plans a series of articles about opera in the days leading up to the issue that will offer a ballot, including one about "how you know more about opera than you think."

Some commenters saw the move as a "noxious stunt" and predicted there would be little interest from readers of a newspaper that features a Page 3 cutie.

A slap in the face to opera fans?

A writer for Opera magazine told the Guardian it was a slap in the face to loyal opera fans.

But anyone could buy the July 31 issue of the Sun that features details of the ticket lottery, said another commenter.

Tony Hall, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, said the plan was a chance to present opera to "an audience of new faces."

It is part of a raft of efforts intended to cultivate new opera lovers. Among the other plans are special family performances with discounted ticket prices.

The ROH also plans to follow the lead of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and begin offering live performances to be simulcast in cinemas in Europe and the U.K.

The Royal Opera already has experimented with showing taped performances in cinemas.

But starting with the Sept. 8 performance of Don Giovanni, there will be live simulcasts of performances that people can see in cinemas for tickets costing about $40.

Other performances to be simulcast include the Royal Ballet performance of Ondine and concerts such as Handel's Messiah.

So far 112 cinemas in the U.K. and Europe have agreed to show the operas and ballets. The live Met performances have been an unexpected hit in Britain, as they were in North America.