The Royal Opera House’s archive of opera and ballet performances is being made available to audiences across the world, enabling subscribers in 95 countries to instantly start watching.
More than a million people go to performances by the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet in Covent Garden in London each year. Now people in countries as far afield as Brazil and China are able to watch its productions, both historic and recent, online. Each recording can now be streamed from a large archive.
James Whitebread, the ROH’s chief technology officer, said: “We’ve got a very large catalogue of past performances that we are effectively looking to make available. They weren’t generally available to audiences before beyond highlight clips on YouTube, for example. But now we have the ability to release those performances. Cloud technology makes opera and ballet recordings very accessible. Their streaming start in fractions of a second. So it’s very quick.”
The global expansion is a collaboration between the Royal Opera, the Royal Ballet and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is providing the technology platform.
Traditionally, if footage was requested, it could take weeks for a member of staff to search through archival material. The hope is that by employing an on-demand streaming service powered by cloud computing, the ROH will reach bigger, more diverse audiences.
Prices are significantly lower than attending productions in person. While Covent Garden tickets to Don Carlo, Nicholas Hytner’s production of Verdi’s epic historical opera, cost between £34 and £255, for example, a monthly subscription to ROH Stream costs £9.99.
The ROH launched the streaming service in October last year, originally limited to 45 productions, and the catalogue has been expanded with new performances monthly.
The technology is also enabling performers to have remote rehearsals with fellow artists and choreographers long before they physically come together in Covent Garden.
The ROH has installed Internet of Things (IoT) technology to record and livestream its ballet and opera rehearsal rooms for performers.
Whitebread said: “It’s something that’s done in the sports world, but live instant replays of rehearsals are very new to opera and ballet. It’s a fantastic use of technology to help with the creative process.”
Brazilian audiences have particularly followed performances by Marcelino Sambé, a Portuguese principal of the Royal Ballet; Mexicans have been drawn to Like Water for Chocolate, Christopher Wheeldon’s acclaimed production inspired by Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel’s 1989 tale of food and forbidden passions; and Japanese audiences have watched productions with Fumi Kaneko, a Japanese principal of the Royal Ballet.
Chris Hayman, AWS’s head of UK public sector, said: “It’s a privilege to work with the ROH, one of the world’s most celebrated cultural institutions. Using AWS cloud services, including technologies like IoT and artificial intelligence, the ROH has been able to make opera and ballet accessible to new and diverse audiences in the UK and around the world.”
• This article was amended on 7 July 2023. Livestreams of the Royal Opera House’s rehearsal rooms are for performers only, not for the public as an earlier version said.
