The realness of this moment, a grand cultural institutional struggling to find its way forward in a global pandemic, was made heart-wrenchingly clear when Joyce DiDonato joined seven players from the Met’s viola section to perform “Ombra mai fu” from Handel’s Serse in memory of their colleague Vincent Lionti, who died early this month of the coronavirus. These performances were taped in advance, but that did not diminish the technological achievement or the emotion of the moment, especially it all came together in a rousing performance of “Va, pensiero” from Verdi’s Nabucco.

I immediately regretted not stocking my fridge with Champagne and smoked salmon.īut perhaps the most moving moments came when the Met itself came together-dozens of musicians and singers performing remotely, led by a T-shirt clad Nézet-Séguin from a tiny square on their respective computer screens. Cheers!” The accompanying photo of the near-perfect creation of smoked salmon and cream cheese on brown bread brought praise (“That really looks like the sandwich!” and “The bread to salmon ratio is precise!”) and wry memories (“Better this than that awful chicken croissant thing” and “Except just this once it didn’t cost you $22!”). Michael Cooper, the classical-music reporter for the New York Times, tweeted, “So excited for virtual gala that I’ve tried to recreate the sandwich I usually get at the downstairs bar at the Met in Founders Hall, by the bust of Caruso. I suddenly saw a bunch of tweets from people gathering to watch the four-hour concert, several of them posting photos of the glass of Champagne they had poured in honor of the event or outfits they had donned in celebration.

We were both going to watch the At-Home Gala being livestreamed by the Metropolitan Opera on its website, she from her apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, me from mine 11 blocks north.Īnd we were not alone. Saturday, I got a text from a friend reminding me that we had a date.

Metropolitan opera live stream