New York Times: Antoine Hodge, Opera Singer With a Powerful Work Ethic, Dies at 38. “Over the past two decades, Mr. Hodge appeared with more than 15 professional companies, singing mostly small or featured roles with troupes like Charlottesville Opera in Virginia and Opéra Louisiane in Baton Rouge and performing in the chorus at the Met, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Atlanta Opera and Opera Colorado.”
New York Times: Prompted by the Pandemic, Opera Philadelphia Innovates Online. “What can an opera company actually do in a pandemic? Yes, some previously planned performances can be turned into livestreams, and broadcasts of past stagings can be made freely available — if only to remind the public what it’s missing. But where some companies might be resigned to only that, Opera Philadelphia pluckily spent 2020 commissioning new work and launching its own streaming service.”
Broadway World: Wiener Staatsoper Opens Digital Archive. “For the period of the temporary closure (3 to 30 November 2020 inclusive), the Vienna State Opera will offer video recordings from the digital archive as a stream free of charge.”
Gramophone: Soprano Jennifer Vyvyan celebrated in new website. “A new website has been launched devoted to the life and legacy of soprano Jennifer Vyvyan (1925-74), setting her career within the musical, cultural and political context of the time, and as such painting a compelling portrait not just of the English singer, but of the era she inhabited.”
New York Times: The Metropolitan Opera Won’t Reopen for Another Year. “The Metropolitan Opera announced Wednesday that the still-untamed coronavirus pandemic has forced it to cancel its entire 2020-21 season, prolonging one of the gravest crises it has faced in its 137-year history and keeping it dark until next September.”
New York Times: The Met Opera Tries to Find Paying Customers in a Pandemic. “The classical music and opera offerings this spring and summer have mostly been free — and tremendously gratifying. But as cancellations continue into the fall, and beyond, organizations have worried that listeners will start taking free performances for granted. So the Met is testing whether audiences will pay for digital content with a series of recitals by some of its biggest stars; the first, on Saturday, featured the tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Tickets are $20, roughly the price of the Met’s Live in HD movie-theater transmissions.”
Dunya News: As lockdown lifts, Barcelona plants enjoy a day at the opera. “The lights dim, the curtain rises and the music begins — all signs normal life has returned to Barcelona’s Liceu opera house, were the seats not filled with some 2,300 plants. After months of silence, the emblematic opera house located in central Barcelona decided to throw open its doors with a unique performance — a metaphor for the months of lockdown when nature took back space from people.”
Travel+Leisure: The Metropolitan Opera Is Offering a Ridiculously Cool Virtual Summer Camp — and It’s Free (Video). “On June 15, the Metropolitan Opera will launch its Met Opera Global Summer Camp, an educational initiative to ‘engage and support students worldwide.’ According to a statement provided by the Metropolitan Opera, the eight-week online summer camp will run from June 15 to August 7 and will include a featured opera each week from the Met’s own digital library of performances. And best of all, it will be completely free for children and teens to attend.”
Hindustan Times: Milan’s La Scala opera house ‘re-opens’ via Google virtual tour during coronavirus lockdown. “Milan’s famed La Scala opera house on Thursday unveiled a virtual journey through its ornate premises and rich archives via Google Arts & Culture, with serendipitous timing as theaters throughout Italy and the western world remain closed due to the coronavirus.”
Apartment Therapy: You Can Now Stream Classical Opera and Ballet Performances For Free. “The classical arts bring history and culture into lives around the globe. But you don’t have to wait for the theater doors to reopen in order to reap the benefits: Stingray Classica is offering one month of on-demand and live performances that can be streamed for free (no dress code required!). The Canada-based TV channel has opened up their digital library for everyone to enjoy for a month free of charge. Stingray Classica features orchestral performances, operas, ballets, and music documentaries from all over the globe, ranging in genres for every type of performing arts lover. ”
Broadway World: Metropolitan Opera Launches Weekly Free Student Streams. “On April 6, the Metropolitan Opera will launch Free Student Streams, a new program of free opera streams for students and teachers worldwide during the health crisis. Drawing from the Met’s extensive online library of operas and curricular materials designed to align with the Common Core Standards, and incorporating new live virtual conversations with Met artists and educators from the company’s national education program, the initiative has been designed as an ongoing cross-curricular offering at a time when schools are closed and online classwork has increased dramatically.”
ClassicFM: Royal Opera House is streaming free ballet and opera online during coronavirus outbreak. “The Royal Opera House has announced that it will be launching a programme of online shows and masterclasses, following the coronavirus outbreak. The news comes as London’s famous opera house is just one of the music institutions to be affected by COVID-19, with many of its upcoming productions now forced to be cancelled or postponed.”
Playbill: Metropolitan Opera, After Shutting Its Doors, Will Offer Free Streams From Live in HD Catalog. “Beginning March 16, the Met will stream a title from its Live in HD series each night through the duration of the closure. The performances, originally captured as live broadcasts in movie theatres worldwide, will begin at 7:30 PM from the company’s homepage. (The featured performances—and several others—are available via the Met Opera on Demand subscription service, though the videos in the nightly series will be made available for free for 20 hours following the initial stream).”
New-to-me, from Open Culture: The Opera Database: Find Scores, Libretti & Synopses for Thousands of Operas Free Online. “If you don’t live in a major city or can’t get to the opera often, you can watch full-length performances online at projects like The Opera Platform, which not only includes filmed popular operas like Verdi’s La Traviata, but also, as Colin Marshall noted in an earlier Open Culture post, ‘provides a host of supplementary materials, including documentary and historical materials that put the month’s featured opera in context.’ If you’re ready to dig deeper, however, or are already a scholar of the form, or if you, yourself, happen to be an opera singer, then you will absolutely want to visit the Opera Database.”
The Stage: Danish start-up to launch ‘LinkedIn for opera artists’. “A Danish start-up hoping to overhaul the talent-booking process for opera has launched a platform that aims to foster closer relationships between artists and organisations. Founded by Danish opera singer Sune Hjerrild, Truelinked will launch in the UK later this year as an online platform for artists to connect directly with organisations, described as a professional self-management system.”
