Opera House offers a tenor for just a tenner

Tickets for the best seats at the Royal Opera House in London are to be sold for £10 each to bring the live arts to a wider audience.

Tickets for the best seats at the Royal Opera House in London are to be sold for £10 each to bring the live arts to a wider audience.

Discounts of up to £165 each will be offered on 100 tickets for performances from some of the world's premier stars, such as Placido Domingo and Angela Gheorghiu. The experiment, which follows the success of the £10 season at the National Theatre in the capital, will run on Monday nights.

Tony Hall, the Opera House's chief executive, alongside Lloyd Dorfman, the chairman of Travelex, which is sponsoring the £1m deal, said: "This will give many ballet and opera fans the chance to have the ultimate experience. It is a to-die-for deal for people who never dreamed they could ever sit in the stalls of the Opera House to hear Domingo."

Nearly one-third of audiences at some National Theatre shows were encouraged to visit for the first time by the cheap tickets, and the Opera House hopes its deal will prove equally attractive. A new, more welcoming policy has boosted the number of first-time visitors to the venue to 39 per cent of the audience this season.

Darcey Bussell, one of the Royal Ballet's stars, said the sponsorship deal was "brilliant", but she wished it were possible to do more for cheaper seats.