The Stage

Royal Opera House productions to be broadcast on the BBC under new deal

Published Monday 30 March 2009 at 12:05 by matthew Hemley

The Royal Opera House has entered into a new partnership with the BBC, which will see Wayne McGregor’s productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the venue broadcast on BBC4.

The shows will be televised in May - two of eight operas and ballets that will broadcast on BBC2 and BBC4 in total.

Under the deal, a range of ROH productions will also be broadcast on the radio.

This will include an eight-week season of operas to be aired on BBC Radio 3, in the broadcaster’s Saturday evening’s Opera on 3 strand.

The season launches on May 16 with Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, with other operas including Bryn Terfel performing the title role in Wagner’s Der Fliegende Höllander.

Elsewhere, the BBC and the ROH will work together to bring operas to people around the UK in a series of outdoor screenings, while ROH productions broadcast on the BBC will become available on the BBC iPlayer for the first time.

The partnership will also see Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera, present a three-part series called Viva Opera Italia, which charts the history of Italian Opera from Monteverdi to Puccini.

The series will be broadcast on BBC4 in summer 2010 and will featuring behind the scenes footage from Covent Garden.

ROH chief executive Tony Hall said: “We are in a new era and the technology now available enables us, in partnership with the BBC, to record the very best of opera and ballet on our stage at Covent Garden and broadcast and release it to millions of viewers and listeners across the world. It’s very exciting to see our work made available across different platforms through this partnership, and in formats that appeal to the different audiences.”