Sydney Opera House launches online streaming platform

Sydney – Tuesday 6 April, 2021. The Sydney Opera House today launched a new online streaming platform to showcase world-class performing and digital arts. Stream follows the success of the award-winning 2020 digital season From Our House to Yours – created while the Opera House was temporarily closed to the public due to COVID-19 – and will showcase highlights from the Opera House’s incredible multi-genre archive, livestreams of new performances, presentations by resident and international performing arts companies, and original digital content created exclusively for the platform.

Sydney Opera House is dedicated to making the exceptional art performed on its iconic stages accessible to everyone. Over 30 hours of programming across more than 45 performances and events are now available to watch on-demand, with new content announced monthly. A subscription to Stream is free, with exclusive access to ticketed performances and events available to rent.

Sydney Opera House Head of Digital Programming, Stuart Buchanan, said,

“The Sydney Opera House digital program lives beyond the confines of the stage, augmenting livestreams and performance recordings with digital-first work that celebrates the ways in which technology is being embraced and disrupted in the performing arts.

Artists have always been early adopters of any new technology, and through the pandemic we are seeing a critical mass of audiences follow their lead and embrace streaming as a truly viable alternative to in-venue performance.

With Stream we have created a space that is accessible for all audiences anywhere in the world as well as local patrons who cannot visit theatres in-person. Through our commissioning program, we’re thrilled to be working with a diverse range of voices across the artistic community who are transforming traditional genre definitions and incorporating digital into their everyday practice.”

Stream

Announced today, the inaugural autumn-winter 2021 program for Stream includes:

• Free livestreams of four concerts on the iconic Opera House Forecourt spanning three days from Friday 9 – Sunday 11 April. Featuring some of the most exciting artists in Australian music, the multi-genre, four-show program includes live performances from Jack River; an Indigenous-led showcases of tomorrow’s game-changers at BARRABUWARI Sunset Gathering; a repertoire of classical masterpieces from the Sydney Symphony Strings; and BARRABUWARI presents Ziggy Ramo.
• New content available to rent from the Opera House’s ANTIDOTE 2020 and All About Women 2021 festivals, as well as the best in local and international performing arts programming including two cinematic and immersive concert films by the Australian Chamber Orchestra produced in collaboration with leading directors and cinematographers. ACO StudioCasts Rapture and Revolution and Bach and the Beyond transcend the concert hall to take viewers deep into the electrifying energy of an ACO performance experience.
• A stunning suite of free archival content including highlights from Vivid LIVE and Lighting of the Sails; Badu Gili – the nightly year-round sails projections of eminent First Nations artists; Dance Rites – Australia’s annual First Nations dance competition; and the 2020 season of unmissable live music, dance, cabaret, comedy, talks, and musical theatre, From Our House to Yours.
• Performances by Sydney Opera House resident companies Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Bell Shakespeare, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, and local companies Sydney Chamber Opera and Omega Ensemble.
• Free content for kids and families including Footlights & Booklights where famous faces and artists read aloud favourite Australian storybooks, featuring Justine Clarke, Play School’s Zindzi Okenyo, and author and hip-hop artist Briggs.

The digital program curated by the Opera House’s Head of Digital Programming, Stuart Buchanan, will showcase new work at the intersection of digital and live performance by iconic artists, emerging voices and diverse local communities, alongside the latest innovations in international and Australian digital art.

Upcoming original programming curated specifically for Stream includes:

• SHORTWAVE – a series of new digital commissions, designed to platform a diverse cross-section of emerging or early career interdisciplinary Australian artists working at the forefront of digital performance. Each artist will develop a digital work that examines the relationship between performance-based practice and digital technology. The works will form part of an ongoing series, with new artists featured each month, starting with Eugene Choi in May, Xanthe Dobbie in June, Kalanjay Dhir in July and Friendships in August.
• RETURNING – a free online exhibition of new video works by four Australian and Japanese contemporary artists. Curated by the Opera House’s Contemporary Art Curator Micheal Do in collaboration with The Japan Foundation and the Opera House’s Digital Programming team, these new works by artists Cherine Fahd (AUS), Caroline Garcia (AUS), Yu Araki (JPN), Koki Tanaka (JPN) will respond to our post pandemic world using the lenses of movement, sound and bodily experience. 
• OUTLINES Digital Performance Lab will be held in the Utzon Room and the Studio as part of the 2021 UnWrapped Festival on Sunday 30 May, and the resulting works will be available to watch on Stream in June. From creative AI and generative story engines to motion-capture music performance, Outlines brings leading technologists together with boundary-pushing artists to rethink the future of performance. Designed to connect physical and digital worlds, Outlines will feature artists embracing and disrupting digital platforms and technology to deliver new forms of live performance.
  The full UnWrapped program will be announced on 7 April.
• Ziggy Ramo – after his ground-breaking performance of Black Thoughts for From Our House to Yours, the Sydney Opera House is collaborating with Ziggy Ramo to create a new film clip to accompany new music as well as a behind-the-scenes documentary.

FAQs – how to watch Stream