I have just come across a service that may be of interest to others, but appears not to be widely known it may be: at least, a forum search found only 3 mentions, all by the same member (@Musicmad).
The service is Medici.tv. Their website, linked below, says “medici.tv is recognized as the world’s leading classical music channel. Each year, we are proud to bring 150+ exceptional live performances from top artists and ensembles to passionate music fans worldwide. Our platform is home to the world’s largest video-on-demand catalog in the classical music industry with over 4,000 concerts, operas, ballets, documentaries, master classes and jazz programs available to stream in HD.”. (Not sure what jazz is doing there…)
They do live streaming as well as recorded, and from what I have read so far they draw from multiple sources not just the one. They work by subscription, at £10 pm, or 50 pa. As I write this I have yet to try it, so can’t offer any experience.
My interest in streaming live recordings of opera started during lockdown, when the NY Met was offering a free performance a week. More recently some discussion on the LaScala.tv thread prompted me to start looking into different services, and in fact I watched one live at a local studio theatre yesterday (Turandot from ROH - I posted some thoughts in the LaScala.TV thread afterwards.)
LaScala.tv is pay per view, at a price that depends on performance and video quality, it appears purely from their own repertoire. Royal Opera House offers a live and live recording service for a subscription of £10pm or £100 pa, also apparently purely from their own repertoire. NY Met offers live recordings for a subscription of $15 pm or $150 pa.
Does anyone else have experience of Medici.TV - or these or other alternatives - that they’d like to share?