The Royal Opera House (ROH) has announced a programme of streamed and digital content, across a range of platforms, which will be available throughout the festive period.
The series includes free online broadcasts from the ROH archives, live pay-per-view performances from the Covent Garden theatre, and an array of cultural highlights across Netflix, Now TV, YouTube and the BBC.
Live performances will be broadcast directly from the opera house’s main stage and Linbury Theatre. Kicking things off is the Royal Opera Christmas Concert. This evening of festive operatic standards is presented by Roderick Williams and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth. It includes work by composers including Rossini, Puccini and Mozart, along with highlights from Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (1893) and Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols (1912).
The concert will be broadcast live on Friday 18 December at 7pm; it will then be available for 30 days after the initial showing. Tickets cost £10. You can also listen to the concert on Boxing Day at 7.30pm on BBC Radio 3.
The Royal Opera will also present the 2020 revival of Richard Jones’s 2017 version of Puccini’s La bohème (The Bohemians, 1896). The production stars Sonya Yoncheva as Mimì, Charles Castronovo as Rodolfo, Andrzej Filończyk as Marcello and Simona Mihai as Musetta. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus are conducted by Emmanuel Villaume.
This showing will be available for 30 days via the Royal Opera House’s website from 7pm on Friday 11 December. Tickets cost £3. The 2017 production, starring Nicole Car and Michael Fabiano and conducted by Antonio Pappano, will be on Netflix from 20 December.
Further Royal Opera House productions will also be available to watch and listen to as part of an ongoing partnership with the BBC. A 2018 version of Verdi’s Falstaff (1893), starring Bryn Terfel in the title role, is to be broadcast on 12 December at 6.30pm on BBC Radio 3. The Royal Opera’s All Star Gala can be seen on BBC 4 on Christmas Day at 7pm. The festive concert features much-loved classics of the repertory by Bellini, Bizet, Donizetti, Dvořák, Puccini, Rossini and Verdi.
A favourite from the Royal Opera House repertory will be shown on YouTube for free this Christmas. A 2017 production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791) will be available from Christmas Day until 6 January 2021.
In a new collaboration, a raft of recent productions will also be available to watch on Now TV. These are Verdi’s searing tragic opera Il trovatore (The Troubadour, 1853); Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904); Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann (1881); Mozart’s Così fan tutte (Women are Like That, 1790) and Bellini’s operatic masterpiece Norma (1831). All are available now to the end of December.
Image
Charles Castronovo as Rodolfo and Sonya Yoncheva as Mimì in the Royal Opera’s 2020 revival of Richard Jones’s 2017 version of Puccini’s La bohème, (Tristram Kenton).