Remember back when the compact disc was new? It was such a novelty, in fact, that you were as likely to have to go to an electronics dealer or a maverick toy store to get one, rather than your favorite record shop. Back then, a huge percentage of the CDs I saw for sale were classical music. Why? Because classical fans are serious about quality, and many will invest cash and risk new tech in the pursuit of high fidelity. So it’s a little surprising that it’s taken this long for operas to make an appearance on Blu-ray. Regardless, the Opus Arte imprint is now officially ahead of the curve, with a line of operas in high-def now being distributed through Naxos. Among their earliest releases are Mozart’s crowd pleaser The Magic Flute, under the direction of Sir Colin Davis, and Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. Highbrow videophiles who don’t do opera are finding titles to suit them as well, with the occasional ballet like Swan Lake hitting the Blu-ray format, while historical costume dramas such as The Other Boleyn Girl and performance-heavy imports like Saawariya (an Indian musical take on a Dostoyevsky tale) trickle out slowly. Fans of experimental composition, sadly, may have to wait a bit: as with a new documentary chronicling Karlheinz Stockhausen’s elaborate Helicopter String Quartet, those works are still relegated to standard DVD.