Live music returns to Royal Opera House for an online audience
The Royal Opera House is to host its first live event since closing its doors to the public on 17 March. On Saturday 13 June the first concert in a series of three will be live-streamed from the famous London stage via YouTube and Facebook and broadcast on Radio 3. The programme will include performances from singers Louise Alder, Toby Spence and Gerald Finley, and a world premiere of a new work by choreographer Wayne McGregor.
Two further concerts (on 20 and 27 June) will be available to view live and on demand for £4.99, but the opening concert will be free, and will be hosted by the BBC’s Anita Rani and the ROH’s director of music, Antonio Pappano. BBC Television will subsequently broadcast highlights from all three concerts, and have also today announced a rebroadcast of Pappano’s acclaimed 2010 series Opera Italia.
Opera will feature strongly in the BBC’s summer Culture in Quarantine offerings. Productions from festivals including Glyndebourne and Garsington will be on iPlayer, and the Royal Opera House’s recent production of Fidelio, forced to close in March before it was able to complete its run, will also be available.
The BBC also announces today that its partnership with the Wigmore Hall will resume in the autumn for a further series of specially staged concerts broadcast live on Radio 3 and live-streamed from the central London concert hall.
Further new classical content on the BBC will include the first “remote access” Imagine film. The documentary Imagine: This House is Full of Music promises an intimate portrait of the Kanneh-Mason family in lockdown. Sheku, 2016’s BBC Young Musician winner and Royal Wedding cellist, has six siblings aged 10 - 24, all also exceptionally talented musicians. Via fixed rig cameras installed in their house and remotely operated, with interviews captured through video messaging, the programme will look at the family’s life and music-making in lockdown.
Tony Hall, BBC Director-General, said: “The pandemic has had a severe impact on the UK’s creative industries, which prior to lockdown were worth £100bn per year. The BBC wants to do all it can to bring British creativity to the widest possible audience. We are working with cultural organisations and artists to make that happen.”
Live music has also returned to Abbey Road, with the Royal Philharmonic in the historic studio on Thursday 4 June following its ten-week closure – its first in 90 years. The orchestra were able to record together in a socially distanced environment, jazz singer Melody Gardot joined the session remotely from Paris and producer Larry Klein was also a presence from Los Angeles.
