New York’s Carnegie Hall launches on-demand video network service

Carnegie Hall is launching an on-demand video network that features recorded performances of classical artists known for performing there.

Carnegie Hall+, created in a partnership Unitel, was to launch Wednesday night. It costs $7.99 monthly and is available through the Apple TV app and smart televisions, Roku, Amazon Fire and other devices.

Content includes operas from the Salzburg Festival and the Bayreuth Festival’s 1979-80 staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle directed by Patrice Chéreau. Concerts and ballets are available, and featured performers include Luciano Pavarotti, Renée Fleming, Leontyne Price, Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann, and conductors Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, Carlos Kleiber, Riccardo Muti and Claudio Abbado.

Carnegie executive and artistic director Clive Gillinson said the Hall began exploring a network about 15 years ago, initially as an audio-only project. “It became very clear that the audio scene was saturated with very, very big players, so the focus went to the audiovisual,” he said.

Forced to stop performing during the pandemic, many organizations took to streaming on their own websites and various platforms, such as YouTube.

“There’s a lot of singular projects in the marketplace of organizations that are promoting and presenting their own work, but we felt we had the opportunity to create the destination in this area,” Gillinson said. “We bring the very best of everything from all around the world and present it here. We felt to transfer that into the virtual world would be incredibly compelling.”

Carnegie Hall+ will carry future performances from the Hall but has not decided whether they will be streamed live or as recordings. Relatively few events were recorded on camera because production costs in the U.S. have been higher than elsewhere.