Europe Comes To You: Best Exhibitions, Concerts, Operas, Ballet To Watch Online For Free

World-famous cultural institutions, closed due to coronavirus, are opening their online doors to anybody and everybody who want to enjoy their art for free through virtual exhibitions or web-documentaries offering immersions in ultra-high-definition masterpieces or explorations of artistic treasures.

Since you can’t get to theaters, museums, galleries, music venues or opera houses during these difficult days of confinement, instead they’ll come to you.

Here’s a list of some of Europe’s best-known artistic and musical institutions that have been working to help lift the spirits of arts fans trapped in quarantine and lockdowns by creating digital-streaming concerts and ballets as well as virtual tours and online galleries.

1 – Madrid’s  Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is offering its now-closed Rembrandt and Portraiture in Amsterdam, 1590-1670 exhibit for virtual viewing, and a virtual tour of its wonderful permanent collection.

2 – For those who missed one of the Louvre Museum’s greatest artistic events of the year, the massive retrospective of Leonardo Da Vinci, enjoy Leonardo as never seen before through the special multimedia exhibition created on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the master’s death by the Beaux Arts Magazine.

“Rich in animations, documents (audio and video) and works in high definition,” as the magazine explains, it includes “an interactive map of the cities where the artist lived, deciphers the different stages of his creative process, explains the story of the mad tribulations of Mona Lisa and offers a vivid look at the multiple talents of the master of sfumato.”

The magazine is also offering unlimited exploration — for free until April 15 — of all its content, full of digital wonders.

3 – The most visited museum of the world, the Louvre in Paris, offers virtual tours online through its Egyptian antiquities department and the recently-restored Galerie d’Apollon. It also has a number of thematic “Visitors Trails” designed to give an overview of the scope and wealth of the museum’s collections.

Each trail is based on a selection of works that characterize a period, an artistic movement or a theme. It includes the iconic artworks from JAY-Z and Beyoncé’s music video “Apes**t.”

4 – The Vatican Museums offer 360-degree tours of the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s Rooms.

5 – The multimedia Digitorials (digital online publications) collection, developed by the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, offers each of the major exhibitions of the museum since 2015, including Titian and the Renaissance, Matisse/Bonnard, Making Van Gogh, each richly documented to bring the images to life and reveal their exciting content.

The most successful? According to Beaux Arts, it’s “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism.” The museum also offers its excellent digital collection divided by themes such as “Climate Change,” “Europe,” and “Arcadia.”

6 – Another Frankfurt Museum, the Schrin, has digitally opened its current exhibition, now closed due to the virus, called “Fantastic Women” (scheduled from February 13 to May 24), highlighting the works of 34 women artists and their contributions to Surrealism and including Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning and Dora Maar.

7- If you’re among the iconic Mexican artist’s fans, don’t miss “Faces to Frida,” a great collaborative work among well-known museums.

8 – “Are you looking for ways to entertain your children with an educational twist?” asks the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Closed like all Europe’s museums, the Van Gogh will “bring Vincent to you” and also invite you to a virtual visit inside the Museum.

In one interactive and entertaining section of its website entitled “stories,” the museum explores the painter’s life, his relationship with his brother Théo, his passion for Japan and also his mental illness. Everything is richly documented and illustrated in high definition.

9 – Then there’s the colossal virtual collections of art available at the Google Arts & Culture platform, which has partnered with 1,200 leading museums and archives to show their exhibits online and offer virtual tours. These feature the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, London’s Tate Modern, National Gallery and British Museum, the Van Gogh and the Rijks museums in Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg annd Viena’s Belvedere.

10 – Worth a mention: the partnership with Paris’s Pompidou Center that offers, among other delights, the virtual exhibition on the intimate life of Vassily Kandinsky that includes the artist’s unpublished documents, photos and personal objects.

Opera companies, symphonies and orchestras from around the world are streaming live rather than cancelling their performances entirely or are replaying old shows for free online. Playing to empty rows, these performances are reaching digital audiences worldwide. Some are also offering free access to digital catalogues of past performances.

11 – The Berliner Philharmoniker which, according to its website, is closed until April 19, “continues to play for you – in the Digital Concert Hall,” and invites you to visit its virtual offerings. “We hope that through this initiative we can give pleasure to as many people as possible with our music,” the orchestra explains, adding that “the Philharmonie is closed – so we will come to you!”

It’s opened its digital library of performances with more than 600 shows. Use the code BERLINPHIL by March 31 to get 30-day access to the orchestra’s stunning work. (Look especially for performances conducted by Simon Rattle, the orchestra’s principal conductor for 16 years).

12 – Supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe program,  OperaVision offers free recorded performances from around the world, including Madama Butterfly from the Royal Swedish Opera, Tosca at the Polish National Opera and from many other opera companies from 17 countries under the editorial supervision of Opera Europa.

13 – For Ballet lovers: The Royal Opera House will be offering a free program of curated online broadcasts, musical master classes and cultural insights that get deep inside both ballet and opera and offer everyone a unique look behind the scenes at one of the world’s most famous cultural institutions.

“In this uncertain time, and as productions and events are postponed at the Royal Opera House and around the world,” the institution explains on its website, “we have created a schedule of free broadcasts and live content that audiences can access for free anywhere, anytime across the globe, bringing both ballet and opera to every home and every device.”

The program include the following productions on demand and for free via the ROH’s Facebook and YouTube channels:

• Peter and the Wolf, The Royal Ballet, 2010 – 27 March 2020, 7pm GMT
• Acis and Galatea, The Royal Opera, 2009 – 3 April 2020, 7pm BST
• Così fan tutte, The Royal Opera, 2010 – 10 April 2020, 7pm BST
• The Metamorphosis, The Royal Ballet, 2013 – 17 April 2020, 7pm BST

A range of recent opera and ballet productions are also available including La Traviata and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with new titles being added all the time.

14 – The BroadwayHD streaming service, created in 2015, is offering New York and West End London Broadway theaters shows for free, for seven days. “The service was created to provide high-quality theater to everyone worldwide,” the company explained.

On the platform, subscribers find a combination of borrowed shows including Cats, The King and I and Sound of Music, as well as Broadway performances filmed by the platform such as Kinky Boots and 42nd Street.