Mining the Archive: Matthew Rye assesses the New York Met’s autumn ‘Wagner Week’ of streamed performances

March 2021, Volume 15, Number 1, 66–9.

Of all the world’s major (and minor) opera houses, the Metropolitan Opera in New York has been both the most inactive and the most active since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Inactive to the extent that at the time of writing (December 2020) it has not attempted to revive theatrical performance to any degree in Lincoln Center, and has already put off the prospect until at least September 2021 – assuming vaccines have been widely rolled out by then. Active in that it has almost alone been streaming operas from its filmed archive nightly since March 2020.