The Royal Opera House (ROH) has announced two evenings of opera and ballet to be broadcast live from the stage in Covent Garden and available to view online wherever you are in the world.

These autumn performances follow on from the success of #OurHouseToYourHouse. This innovative initiative saw ROH present full-length performance streams, live-streamed socially distanced concerts, mini-documentaries and interactive activities for children throughout this year’s lockdown. It generated more than 206 million views from 183 countries around the world.

The Royal Opera: Live in Concert will be broadcast live on Friday 4 September at 7.30pm. Curated by the Royal Opera House’s Director of Music Antonio Pappano, the concert will see Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina, American tenor Charles Castronovo, Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley, American-Spanish soprano Lisette Oropesa, Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva and Italian bass-baritone Vito Priante take to the stage.

They will be joined by two Jette Parker Young Artists: New Zealand-Tongan tenor Filipe Manu and British mezzo-soprano Stephanie Wake-Edwards, as well as 67 members of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and members of the Royal Opera Chorus.

The singers and musicians will be together in person for the first time since the opera house closed its doors to the public on 16 March. They will perform much-loved classics of the opera repertory by Bellini, Bizet, Donizetti, Dvorak, Massenet, Mozart, Puccini, Rossini and Verdi.

Hosted by the BBC’s Katie Derham, the evening will be broadcast live via Vimeo, with access priced at £16 per household and available for 30 days. The BBC will be partnering with ROH to bring the concert to the small screen later this year and to BBC Radio 3 later in September.

The second performance, taking place on Friday 9 October, will see The Royal Ballet return for a unique celebration as the whole company is reunited on its home stage for the first time in seven months. The Royal Ballet will perform with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House a showcase of heritage and modern highlights from the company’s repertory. Further details of this event are still to come.

Alex Beard, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, commented: “Although the future of the UK’s theatre industry remains more uncertain than ever, it is hugely exciting to see our stage back in action. We are still looking forward to the day we can welcome audiences back to our auditorium, but in the meantime I am delighted that, through these two concerts, we are able to bring the very best of the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet to audiences around the world.”

Rehearsals and performances for both concerts will take place in a carefully controlled, socially distanced environment. All artists will observe strict social distancing, as well as undertake other Covid-19 mitigations as per government guidance.

For more details of performances, dates and times, visit the Royal Opera House website.

 

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Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina will take part in The Royal Opera: Live in Concert. Here she performs Carmen in the Royal Opera’s 2019 production of Bizet’s opera (Bill Cooper).