By the end of the second full year of our three-year project, OperaVision (OV) will have streamed 106 full-length performances: 93 operas, 6 concerts, 2 singing competitions and 1 ballet.
45% of the productions were streamed live and 55% as video on demand at frequency of 3 or 4 streams per month. This content is sourced from the 29 partners in our European Commission funded Creative Europe cooperation project, most of whom have contributed at least two titles to OperaVision. A few ‘super’ partners have offered 3 streams in a single season; special thanks are due to Dutch National Opera, Komische Oper Berlin, La Monnaie and Polish National Opera.
We have supplemented the programme with contributions from 21 other institutions including three from outside Europe: NCPA Mumbai, NCPA Beijing and Teatro Municipal de Santiago (Chile) which have offered titles to our World Opera Day celebrations on the platform.
Presenting these full-length streams in an engaging, authoritative and accessible way has been the major challenge for the team over the last 24 months. We have gathered over 600 short-form videos – such as trailers, interviews, behind the scenes documentaries – from our contributors; this material in particular has helped establish OperaVision's growing presence on social media. OperaVision has launched new formats this month to expand its educational remit in the classroom and to reach younger viewers with the curiosity to discover more about opera of their own initiative. These formats – new curriculum focused teaching packs and a new OV YouTube series in which a young singer, Mia Mandineau, presents opera plots (with panache and marker pen) – are a means for OperaVision to strengthen its distinct voice and complement the diversity of our broad partnership of contributors.
The partnership model has proved itself effective over these first 24 months with OperaVision able to offer a programme of full-length performances and editorial insights unrivalled by any other streaming platform. OperaVision has invested time and energy in maintaining this partnership, finding pertinent new contributors and developing new strategic alliances with the likes of Schoolnet (direct contact with Europe’s school teachers), the Association of European Conservatoires (content by young artists) and ncpa-classic.com (streaming in China) to help further our objectives. Ultimately, the last year of the current project will be critical in galvanising a group of opera companies who have enough faith in our initiative to offer their best productions to OperaVision, backed up with a decent investment in communication.
For now, we are on track to surpass the target of 6 million views, which announced as our objective to the European Commission.
Luke O’Shaughnessy
