An opera loving reader has asked about the New York Metropolitan Opera’s nightly streaming and how to get it. The operas are available free and across the globe.

The Met’s instructions are a little convoluted with talk about their apps for Apple and Android etc.  That’s all well and good but most people want a simple path and there is one.

Each nightly performance can be viewed in your browser.  No special extras required on a modern Windows or Mac. Just click a link and enjoy.

These tips apply generally to most online streaming. The controls and options are much the same for opera and non-opera lovers <g>.

We tried this successfully on Chrome for Windows and Mac, Edge for Windows and  Safari for Mac.

Start on the Met home page

Go to https://www.metopera.org/ and scroll down until you see the Watch Now button and mention of the Nightly Opera Stream.

You might need to click on the ‘three boxes’ to switch the page view to see the Watch Now button.

Click on Watch Now and a new window should open.  Click the Play button to begin.

Play Controls

The play back controls are standard for online videos, much the same as YouTube and others.

Captions

According to the Met, only English language captions are available but that might vary according to the video. To enable captions just click on the language wanted e.g. EN for English.

Captions settings lets you change the font, size and position of the captions.

Picture in Picture

Picture in Picture puts a little video window on your screen which sits ‘on top’ of any other windows.  Great if you want the opera to play while you do other things.

The video usually starts in the lower left corner but can be dragged to any position.

Click on a corner to resize the small window to a larger or smaller size.

Close that window by clicking the ‘box with arrow’ icon or the usual ‘Close’ button top left (in Windows).

Full Screen

To see the opera in all its glory, click on Full Screen.

Press the Escape button to leave Full Screen mode.

Fast Forward or Back

Above the bottom control button line is a progress bar that appears as you hover over it.

Click on the playback mark (where the color change) to more forward or back in the video.

If you fast forward, there might be a delay while the stream catches up with the time point you want.

What’s On

See here for the steaming schedule.

The week starting 23rd March will be ‘all Wagner’ which will probably delight and horrify in equal measure.

Each opera will be available from 7:30pm US EDT (i.e New York time) and will remain available for 20 hours (i.e. 3:30pm EDT)

Enjoy!