Ruth Leon recommends…Now the Metropolitan Opera ends its free streams
Ruth Leon recommendsMet Nightly Opera Stream – Viewers Choice
Click here to watch : free until end of this week
Sadly, after this week, the Met is ceasing its free nightly opera stream. Now that they’re gearing up for the new live season in the Metropolitan Opera House, they’re abandoning those of us who don’t live in New York or can’t afford the tickets. It has been a simply wonderful boon to be able to see great singers in their most important roles, many of whom are no longer performing. The schedule has included outstanding complete performances from the past 14 years of cinema transmissions, starring all of opera’s greatest singers. each performance available for a period of 23 hours, from 7:30 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. the following day.
For this final week, the Met has asked viewers to choose their favourites and, unsurprisingly, we have chosen the most famous, sung by the most famous. It’s a wonderful panoply and a reminder of why we need the world’s great opera companies, no matter how chaotic their management or absurdly high their ticket prices. They represent the highest of high art and losing that would be to lose part of what makes us human.
Even if you’ve seen them all already, if you’re an opera lover you will be glued to your screens this week for Jonathan Miller’s production of Les Nozze di Figaro starring Renée Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Susanne Mentzer, Dwayne Croft, and Bryn Terfel on Monday, Zeffirelli’s Cav and Pag starring Tatiana Troyanos, Jean Kraft, Plácido Domingo, and Vern Shinall, Teresa Stratas, Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes, and Allan Monk on Tuesday, Bizet’s Les Pecheurs des Perles on Wednesday, with Diana Damrau, Matthew Polenzani, Mariusz Kwiecień, and Nicolas Testé, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. On Thursday we get Bartlett Sher’s production of Les Contes d’ Hoffmann, sung by Erin Morley, Hibla Gerzmava, Kate Lindsey, Christine Rice, Vittorio Grigolo, and Thomas Hampson, Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment, on Friday, with Natalie Dessay, Felicity Palmer, Juan Diego Flórez and Alessandro Corbelli, Saturday is Il Trovatore in David McVicar’s production, with Anna Netrebko, Dolora Zajick, Yonghoon Lee, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, conducted by Marco Armiliato, and Sunday brings us Un Ballo in Maschera with Sondra Radvanovsky, Kathleen Kim, Stephanie Blythe, Marcelo Álvarez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, conducted by Fabio Luisi.
E busta! That’s it for the Free Nightly Streams which have given so many of us so much pleasure.
Met Opera on Demand
Click here to subscribe
We can still access the Met’s archive via Met Opera On Demand but now we have to pay for it. It costs $14.99/month or $149.99/year, which doesn’t seem to me excessive for this extraordinary collection of operas and stars. They’ll even give you a week’s free trial.
Read more here
It has been a wonderful opportunity to enjoy some fabulous productions and singers. There were so many highlights, but getting another chance to see the amazing Akhenaten production which they shared with ENO and which I saw in London, was one of them.
I will certainly subscribe and catch up on some performances that I missed (or want to revisit). I agree with Norman, it’s not a bad price for what you get.
I think it’s important, however, that opera is available freely: it is the ultimate art form: why would we not wish to share it? It’s not easy for younger generations to get the bug if the jewels are only available for those who can afford them. It would be nice if the Met and ROH would continue to throw us scraps from time to time! Thank goodness for OperaVision and ARTE Concert (which currently has an extraordinary collection of opera productions to enjoy)!
Free means no money for the artists.
The mat isn’t abandoning you. If you love it so much, just pay for the subscription service and watch everything anytime you want. This idea that you should get everything for free is so millennial, which I’m not sure you are.
College educated democrats are socialists at the very least or pseudo-communists at the extreme Jim.
They believe Cuba is a utopia where everything is rationed such as food as fat as some of them are!
Gee, through the entire pandemic, I’ve been paying for Met On Demand as I have been for years. Just do it, if you can; it’s wonderful.
Met Nightly Opera Streams helped me have a good time during lock-down and made fine my quarantine (fina quarantina as we named it in Greece, a looong way from New York!)