Met Opera Is Streaming Free, Iconic Performances Every Night This Week

By Greta Bjornson @greatbjornson
Published March 17, 2020, 4:36 p.m. ET

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COVID-19

With the coronavirus epidemic shuttering Broadway, closing museums and postponing concerts, cultural institutions are getting creative with ways to keep the public entertained. Adding to that list? The Metropolitan Opera has announced plans to stream some of its famous operas to online audiences with Nightly Met Opera Streams, recordings of previous performances all pulled from its Live in HD series.

The offer comes after the Met Opera announced March 13 it would be cancelling all performances and rehearsals and closing its doors until at least March 31. Earlier in the month, they had issued a quarantine for employees traveling to New York from high risk regions.

Music fans looking to get their opera fix can find the performances on the homepage of metopera.org at 7:30/6:30c each evening, where they’ll be available to stream for 20 hours once posted, free of charge. Viewers using the Met Opera on demand app can also use their mobile devices to tune in.

“We’d like to provide some grand opera solace to opera lovers in these extraordinarily difficult times,” Met General Manager Peter Gelb said in a March 13 press release. “Every night, we’ll be offering a different complete operatic gem from our collection of HD presentations from the past 14 years.”

The series began Monday (March 16) with a 2010 performance of Carmen, and will continue with classic operas through March 22.

Check out the schedule below:

Tuesday, March 17 – Puccini’s La Bohème

Conducted by Nicola Luisotti, starring Angela Gheorghiu and Ramón Vargas. Broadcast 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. Broadcast 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. Broadcast 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. Broadcast 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. Broadcast live on February 7, 2009.

Sunday, March 22 – Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin

Conducted by Valery Gergiev, starring Renée Fleming, Ramón Vargas, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Broadcast live on February 24, 2007.