Where Can I Watch Opera Online?

When it comes to operas and musicals, many people, especially newcomers to opera, may think they are similar. For example, many people may hold the view that both operas and musicals use music to further stories along. But technically speaking, operas and musical theatres are in great difference. Can you tell the differences between an opera and a musical theatre? Let's have a look about them.

- Operas focus on singing, while musicals focus on stories and characters.
- In operas, singers are not provided with mikes. In comparison to musicals, singers have mikes.
- One one hand, in terms of singing, opera singers requires rigorous vocal training and they sing in bel canto style. On the other hand, singers in musical theatres tend to have less strenuous vocals and they are more likely to sing in various styles.
- Operas have an orchestra whereas musicals don't have an orchestra. Instead, musical theatres use electric instruments.
- Operas are sung in many languages such as Italian, French, and German while musicals are English dominating.
- Operas used to be appreciated by the nobles and now are more likely to be regarded as a high culture, while musical theatres are more relaxed and humorous, which is more accepted by people.

Since you are a newcomer of opera, you probably want to know some information about some classics. So we provide you a top 10 greatest operas of all time in no particular order.

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
Language: Italian
Based on: Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo
Famous Aria: La donna e mobile
Rigoletto is widely considered to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career. It is a tragic story centering on three characters: the licentious Duke of Mantua, his jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda.

  

Composer: Giacomo Puccini
Language: Italian
Based on: La Tosca by Victorien Sardou
Famous Aria: Vissi d'Arte
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini. It's a melodramatic piece containing torture, murder, and suicide.
  

YouTube - Free
Mezzo.tv - Broadcast TV in France and other European countries
Arte.tv - Free, time-shifted streaming of many productions for viewers.
Alexander Street Opera In Video - subscription service, but available freely through some public libraries.
Medici.tv - subscription service, payments range from $12 - $20 / month. But many live events are free.

I know it would be great to go to opera houses to enjoy an opera. But sometimes the performance schedule may not meet up with your expectation, or worse, the opera that you really want to watch is not available on the performance schedule. Therefore, to handle these situations, I will introduce a method that helps you to download opera songs for free and enables you to listen to your favorite opera songs offline.

Before it starts, you may need a useful downloader. So here I strongly recommend you a Free Online Downloader – VidPaw | Online Video Downloader and MP3 Converter. Now, let's see how to download operas by using VidPaw.

STEP 1. Find the opera songs you want to download on YouTube, and copy its link.
STEP 2. Go to VidPaw's homepage, paste the URL on the search bar, and click on "Download".
    

STEP 3. Choose the output format and quality (e.g. MP3 320kpbs), and click on "Download" on the download page.
    

STEP 4. Download the opera song to your default download folder.
    

When I was young, I felt bored to listen to operas. But now, I become fond of this great art. Part of the reason is operas are full of great singers and meaningful songs. I hope you can feel the same when you finish watching these operas. If you like this post, please share it with your friends.