2020

This second edition of World Opera Day took place during a particularly hard moment for culture and the performing arts. On that week end, the Italian and Belgian governments declared the closure of theatres for at least 4 weeks ad theatre closures have followed in France, Germany, and most of European theatres.

Despite the critical situation, theatres of the world have celebrated World Opera Day according to their capacity and the sanitarian measures of their countries.                              

Opera North opened the World Opera Day week end on Friday 23 October with a webinar dedicated to the creation of a community opera. Then, on Saturday and Sunday World Opera Day in France, 20 theatres open their doors to visitors, offered workshops and masterclasses with Karine Deshayes in the framework of Tous à l’opéra!

The Opera House in Tirana, the Teatro Massimo di Palermo and the Temporadas Russas no Algarve in Portugal proffered special programmes celebrating this year’s emblem Beethoven. The Spanish network of opera companies Ópera XXI celebrated with an Award Ceremony, a version of which remain available to view as video on demand. Teatro Regio di Parma, Macerata Festival and Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe released exclusive World Opera Day videos that are still available on social media. Polish TV streamed Magic Flute and spread messages of Opera Directors for World Opera Day. Many theatres offered exclusive free streaming like New Theatre Tokyo and Fondazione Teatro Coccia di Novara. Many opera houses proposed special online programmes like in Canada, where the highlight was the World Opera Day Gala livestreamed on 25 October from Opera de Québec ; also Welsh National Opera and Northern Ireland Opera Studio premiered on YouTube on that day. 

Moreover, most of our members were actively promoting World Opera Day through their various communication channels: publications, banners outside the theatre and of course on website and social media. This great effort led to a huge movement online: the traffic on www.worldoperaday.com has more than doubled comparing to last year, as well as the engagement in the event on Facebook (2019: 624 2020: 1306). The hashtag #worldoperaday boomed on that week end and was used over 11.000 times on Twitter and Instagram, on Twitter it created a reach of 10.729.530!            The creation of a World Opera Day Instagram was a success and it gains more followers every day (377 on 6 November), it registered almost 3000 video views and appeared to over 12.000 accounts on the World Opera Day weekend.

It was particularly important to be alive this year and show that opera house are active and are offering a rich programme despite the pandemic. We are looking forward to next year with the hope that we will be able to celebrate the re-opening of all live events!