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The Met Opera To Stream Operas For Free During Coronavirus Closure
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 16, 2020
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 16, 2020
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Last week, just about every major museum and cultural institution in NYC announced that it would temporarily close to try to limit the spread of coronavirus. That included the Metropolitan Opera, who said that all performances have been canceled through at least March 31st. Now, these places are starting to think about ways to adapt to our radically different cultural landscape—and the Met Opera will begin streaming encore presentations from their award-winning Live in HD series on the company website for the duration of the closure.
All “Nightly Met Opera Streams” will begin at 7:30 p.m. and will remain available via the homepage of metopera.org for 20 hours.
“We’d like to provide some grand opera solace to opera lovers in these extraordinarily difficult times,” said Met General Manager Peter Gelb. “Every night, we’ll be offering a different complete operatic gem from our collection of HD presentations from the past 14 years.” Lincoln Center has suspended all public performances and screenings through the month of March, as well.
Here's the schedule for this week:
- Monday, March 16 – Bizet’s Carmen (Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, starring Elīna Garanča and Roberto Alagna. Transmitted live on January 16, 2010.)
- Tuesday, March 17 – Puccini’s La Bohème (Conducted by Nicola Luisotti, starring Angela Gheorghiu and Ramón Vargas. Transmitted live on April 5, 2008.)
- Wednesday, March 18 – Verdi’s Il Trovatore (Conducted by Marco Armiliato, starring Anna Netrebko, Dolora Zajick, Yonghoon Lee, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Transmitted live on October 3, 2015.)
- Thursday, March 19 – Verdi’s La Traviata (Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, starring Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Flórez, and Quinn Kelsey. Transmitted live on December 15, 2018.)
- Friday, March 20 – Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment (Conducted by Marco Armiliato, starring Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez. Transmitted live on April 26, 2008.)
- Saturday, March 21 – Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (Conducted by Marco Armiliato, starring Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczała, and Mariusz Kwiecien. Transmitted live on February 7, 2009.)
- Sunday, March 22 – Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (Conducted by Valery Gergiev, starring Renée Fleming, Ramón Vargas, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Transmitted live on February 24, 2007.)
The 92Y, which has also temporarily suspended all of its events, is livestreaming for free two classical musical concerts originally scheduled for this week. Garrick Ohlsson performed a solo recital, without an audience, on Saturday which you can rewatch anytime. And on March 18th at 7:30 p.m., 92Y will livestream a recital, also without an audience, by mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, accompanied by a pianist to be announced, performing Mahler and Beethoven. They also plan to have livestreams of other upcoming concerts and lectures, including "pianist Jonathan Biss performing Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas, and lectures on world politics and the global drama of 2020 with renowned foreign affairs scholar Professor Ralph Buultjens."
Next Sunday, Bowery Poetry will livestream their "No Desk Poetry Concert" from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on their Instagram feed. They write, "We'll live stream & 'pass the mic' from person to person, from the safety of our homes! We will oblige the social distance suggestions and use our poems to connect!"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has offered a visit to their now-closed galleries via their 360 project.
You should expect to see a lot of other variations on this sort of live streaming content in the near future—Bernie Sanders announced that Neil Young and My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James will perform at a "digital rally" on Monday night at 7 p.m. The event will not be open to the public—you can get more info on watching it here.
If you're looking for other ways of entertaining yourselves, I've started a Spotify playlist of new 2020 music you can follow here.
Tagged
COVID-19
coronavirus
met opera
metropolitan opera
streaming
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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