Guggenheim Museum
On Monday, President Trump announced that for the next two weeks, all Americans are urged to stay home and work from home if possible and should avoid non-essential contacts with others to avoid the spread of coronavirus. Most New York museums, concerts, theaters, restaurants, and schools are closed, leaving many New Yorkers with little to do during their day. Yet, it is still possible to stay connected with New York’s extraordinary cultural scene from your own home, from livestreams of the Metropolitan Opera’s greatest performances to virtual tours of New York’s museums.

1. Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera House exteriorThe Metropolitan Opera will be streaming operas for the remainder of this week. Photo courtesy Metropolitan Opera by Jonathan Tichler.

Earlier this week, the Metropolitan Opera announced that all of its performances have been cancelled through March 31. Yet just a day later, the Met Opera announced that it would stream encore presentations of full operas at 7:30pm EDT, available on the Met Opera’s homepage for 20 hours following the stream. The Met Opera will continue to show operas until Sunday, March 22. “We’d like to provide some grand opera solace to opera lovers in these extraordinarily difficult times,” said Met General Manager Peter Gelb. “Every night, we’ll be offering a different complete operatic gem from our collection of HD presentations from the past 14 years.”
The current opera schedule is as follows:
Monday, March 16 – Bizet’s Carmen
Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, starring Elīna Garanča and Roberto Alagna. Transmitted live on January 16, 2010.
Tuesday, March 17 – Puccini’s La Bohème
Conducted by Nicola Luisotti, starring Angela Gheorghiu and Ramón Vargas. Transmitted live on April 5, 2008.
Wednesday, March 18 – Verdi’s Il Trovatore
Conducted by Marco Armiliato, starring Anna Netrebko, Dolora Zajick, Yonghoon Lee, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Transmitted live on October 3, 2015.
Thursday, March 19 – Verdi’s La Traviata
Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, starring Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Flórez, and Quinn Kelsey. Transmitted live on December 15, 2018.
Friday, March 20 – Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment
Conducted by Marco Armiliato, starring Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez. Transmitted live on April 26, 2008.
Saturday, March 21 – Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor
Conducted by Marco Armiliato, starring Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczała, and Mariusz Kwiecien. Transmitted live on February 7, 2009.
Sunday, March 22 – Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
Conducted by Valery Gergiev, starring Renée Fleming, Ramón Vargas, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Transmitted live on February 24, 2007.

2. 92nd Street Y Concerts

Detail of piano at Steinway & Sons factory
For the next few weeks, the 92nd Street Y will be livestreaming concerts from their concert hall with no live audience. On March 18 at 7:30pm, the 92Y will be welcoming mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron in the final concert of its 2019/20 vocal series. Accompanied by pianist Myra Huang, Barron will be singing Beethoven’s song cycle An die ferne Geliebte and Mahler’s song cycles Rückert-Lieder and Kindertotenlieder.
On March 26, the 92Y will be inviting pianist Jonathan Biss to play Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas. Past performances from musicians like pianist Garrick Ohlsson are also available on the 92Y’s website.

3. Chamber Music Society Concerts

Lincoln CenterThe Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center will be livestreaming lectures and masterclasses in April.

Like the Met Opera, the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center announced that all performances have been cancelled through March 31. However, CMS offers a selection of free online concerts in addition to upcoming livestreams on its website.
Distinguished musicians like Bruce Adolphe and Arnaud Sussmann will be giving live lectures and masterclasses starting in April. Also available on the website are numerous videos from the CMS National Radio Series, masterclasses, and recent concerts featuring pieces by Mendelssohn, Hindemith, and Ravel among other composers.

4. Nowadays Livestreaming

Nowadays, a popular dance club, will be livestreaming music and technical how-to’s every night this week.

Nowadays, a popular dance club in Ridgewood, Queens, will be streaming live every night from 8pm until midnight. The livestreams will range from community programming to DJing tutorials. Their schedule for the week is as follows:

Tuesday 3/17: Virtually Nowadays: Ma Sha & Circe’s Hone Social CDJ 101 workshop + DJing afterward
Wednesday 3/18: Virtually Nowadays: Planetarium with Hypnotic Spa, Luxury Skin and Rena Anakwe
Thursday 3/19: Virtually Nowadays: Jasmine Infiniti & Gia
Friday 3/20: Virtually Nowadays: Aurora Halal & DJ Python
Saturday 3/21: Virtually Nowadays: Physical Therapy & Jubilee
Sunday 3/22: Virtually Nowadays: Mister Sunday & Soul Summit Music

5. Stars in the House on Broadway

Lyceum Theater
Following the shut down of Broadway shows, The Actors Fund recently announced that Sirius XM Broadway host Seth Rudetsky and his husband, producer James Wesley, will produce daily online mini-shows titled “Stars in the House” which will feature celebrities speaking about their careers and giving live performances.
New shows will be produced daily at 2pm and 8pm, and each star will sing a mix of their hit songs as well as tell stories about their lives from home. Confirmed stars range from Kelli O’Hara to Rosie O’Donnell to Idina Menzel, among many others. “Stars in the House” will be available on The Actors Fund YouTube channel as well as Playbill and BroadwayWorld.com.

6. Bowery Poetry Livestream

Bowery MarketBowery Poetry will be streaming a poetry concert on its Instagram page on March 22.

On March 22 from 4-7pm, Bowery Poetry will be hosting a No Desk Poetry Concert on its Instagram page @bowerypoetry. Curated by John Paul Davis and Mahogany L. Browne, the livestream will feature 23 writers and poets who will read their works and will virtually “pass the mic” to the following reader.
“We will oblige the social distance suggestions and use our poems to connect! This Virtual open mic will gift a world that really needs poetry,” Bowery Poetry wrote in an Instagram post.

7. Met 360 Project

Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe Metropolitan Museum of Art is offering its Met 360 Program.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which closed temporarily, created its Met 360 Program back in 2016 using spherical 360° technology to allow visitors to visit the museum virtually. The series has been viewed over 11 million times and is currently available on the Met’s website.
Visitors to the website can see sites like the Great Hall, the Met Cloisters garden, the Temple of Dendur, the Arms and Armors Gallery, and other significant sites. The Met also features an online collection and a timeline of art history that tells the story of the Met’s collection.

8. Museum of Modern Art Virtual Walkthroughs

Museum of Modern ArtThe Museum of Modern Art is offering a look into many of its current exhibitions.

Like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art shut its doors temporarily but also offers an online collection of many notable artworks currently found in the museum. The collection is a collaboration between MoMA and Google Arts and Culture.
The MoMA offers a virtual walkthrough of the works of artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp, a Swiss Dada artist. Additionally, the museum offers 129 images of notable sculptures, paintings, installations, and photographs in the museum’s collection with descriptions of each one’s artistic significance and creation.

9. Guggenheim Museum Virtual Walkthrough

Guggenheim MuseumThe spiral interior of Guggenheim Museum can be walked virtually using a new Google platform.

Although the Guggenheim Museum has closed temporarily, viewers can walk the spiral interior of the museum from their computers using a new Google Maps collaboration in which viewers can see every artwork as though they were really there.
Explore modern artworks by Rem Koolhaas, Agnes Martin, Maurizio Cattelan, and African and Oceanic artists while taking a virtual tour of the museum. Although not every artwork can be seen on Google Maps, the website focuses in on a handful of notable artworks and gives their title and artist.

10. Museum of the City of New York Online Exhibits

Museum of the City of New YorkMuseum of the City of New York

In a collaboration with Google Arts and Culture, the Museum of the City of New York offers viewers with an online selection of 796 items from the museum’s exhibits from dresses from Truman Capote’s “Black and White Dance” to photographs of New York’s Upper West Side to graffiti art.
Many notable prints, photographs, and artifacts are also found on MCNY’s website along with descriptions of their historical and artistic significance.

11. David Zwirner Gallery Viewing Room


The David Zwirner Gallery, with locations in SoHo, Chelsea, and the Upper East Side, offers a selection of online opportunities for viewers at home to engage with art. In addition to learning about current exhibitions, viewers can enter The Viewing Room, an online exhibition space where visitors can explore works from curated online-only exhibitions.
Through March 20, explore artist James Welling’s “Pathological Color,” and starting on March 20, view paintings from Art Basel’s collection. Additionally, the David Zwirner Gallery offers a selection of podcasts that pair two exceptional artists who discuss how art “shapes, elevates, and shifts our point of view.”

12. Cello from Untapped New York

Untapped New York founder is recording a cello piece per day and posting it to her  Instagram and Twitter, with her daughter entering the frame whenever she damn well pleases. Michelle was trained at the Juilliard School for cello, starting at the age of 11, performed in Carnegie Hall three times, and was in an indie rock band that performed at SXSW for many years. She went on to do other things besides music but she’s bringing out her cello in this self-isolation time, performing for her family and recording a piece a day

Also, Brooklyn-based Comedian Marissa Goldman, in addition to 15 other comedians, will be hosting quarantine parties on a Google Doc in which comedians write their jokes out in real time to viewers. Each performer has a designated place on the doc, and viewers can watch the comedic routine unfold alongside graphics right on the doc. The party begins at 8pm on March 21 and on following Saturdays.
Next, check out our daily coronavirus daily news digest. Here is today’s digest.