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.