Royal Opera House Stream.

[Andrew Clarke]

This service has just started. It costs 10 pounds sterling a month or 100 pounds p.a. The app works on Google Chromecast and no doubt Apple TV. It tells us that it won't work on my Android phone, presumably because nobody at the ROH can believe that anyone who likes opera and ballet would be seen dead with anything other than the current model iPhone.
So far, we've seen a 2016 production of 'Cosi fan tutte' which really should have been called 'Cosi fa Despina', and the director has thrown in as many "meaningful" interruptions as possible to distract us from the music. Also, there is an irritating little sign that appears at the top left-hand corner of the screen advising us that the performance is suitable for all ages, which does not go away throughout the performance, which is, to say the least, distracting, especially when you can see someone's hat just above it and their neck just below it, but not, sadly, their face.
Mercifully this distraction is absent from the 2008 production of Hansel and Gretel with Diana Damrau and Sir Colin Davis, and from 'Concerto' a superb ballet by Kenneth Macmillan to the music of the Shostakovich Piano Concerto no. 2, which is glorious.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra

[Andrew Clarke]

I should mention that the conductor of Cosi fa Despina was Semyon Bychkov, who IMO did a brilliant job. The other is that the default position with subtitles is Off, and it is far from obvious how you turn them on, or indeed whether this is possible. It is. You click the Chromecast button once to see the start-stop go forward / go back icons, and there's a small speech-balloon icon on the far right which you select to turn the subtitles on. I dare say that the people who decided that nobody who goes to the ROH owns an Android phone also decided that everybody who goes to the ROH is fluent in Italian and German anyway.

Andrew Clarke
Canberra