How many Bolshoi nights in two coronavirus weeks?

Ertuğrul Özkök

The subject may seem like luxury these days for some of you. But millions of people around the world are stuck in their homes. The most famous opera and ballet institutions of the world opened their shows to the world digitally and free of charge. If you want, you can watch the ballet “Nutcracker” in Bolshoi either live or on YouTube within 24 hours after it.

Every night I watch a show from the three most famous show centers in the world. The places I have chosen are Moscow Bolshoi Ballet, New York Metropolitan Opera and Milano La Scala Opera.

Among them, I have not seen any shows in La Scala and Metropolitan to date. These three music and dance arts centers have opened their doors to the world for free for the last 10 days. So how many people have watched the public-free shows in these three centers?

I asked Google administrators this question. They did a great job for me and released one by one how many people watched each show on YouTube.

Here are the world audience figures of the corona days. You can’t find these figures elsewhere.

Bolshoi program

The Bolshoi program starts at 7 p.m. in Moscow time, which is the same time with Turkey. The program includes “Marco Spada” on April 4, “Boris Godunov” on April 7 and “The Nutcracker” on April 10.

Bolshoi makes an application like this: It stages a show without spectators. It starts at 7 p.m. and is broadcast live. Then this show is made public on YouTube 24 hours a day and removed after that time.

The most watched show was “Giselle” ballet with 432,075 people. The video of a Bolshoi Ballet show was watched by 197,893 people in 2019.

In 2013, the number of people watching the video of “Romeo and Juliet” ballet was 128,877. The “Swan Lake” show was watched by 110,368 people in 1989.

The result is that the number of people watching the 12 public access shows of the Bolshoi on YouTube only is 1,152,842. Let’s calculate this: The number of seats in the Bolshoi Theater is 2,153. So, enough people to fill the theater for 535 nights watched these shows for free.

La Scala, the world’s most famous opera, is among those who opened its archive. Some 1,106,980 people watched “La Traviata” staged in Tokyo La Scala hall. The number of people watching “Madame Butterfly” in 2016 was 203, 952, and the number of those watching “Don Quixote” is 98,352.

The result is that the number of people watching 14 free shows of La Scala on YouTube is 2,157,612 people. The seat number of La Scala hall is 2,030. So, enough people to fill this hall for 1,062 nights watched these shows.

Another famous opera in the world, the Metropolitan has opened its archives digitally and released 18 different shows.

Verda’s “Aida” opera, staged by the Opera of San Francisco, was watched by 4,427,981 people. Some 935,938 people watched Mozart’s “Magic Flute” with English subtitles. The number of people watching Wagner’s “Der Ring” is 658,102, while Bizet’nin “Carmen” was watched by 624,786 people, Verdi’s “La Traviata” by 368,882 people, Gounod’s “Faust” by 301,694 people and Puccini’s “Turandot” by 301 bin 521 people.

The result is that 7,768,188 people watched the archives opened by the Metropolitan on YouTube.

The seat number of the New York Metropolitan hall is 3,800. With this calculation, the shows that opened to the world for free were watched by enough people to fill the hall for 2,044 nights.

Yes, this is the cultural balance of the corona days. The world rediscovers opera and ballet.