Links & FAQ

We include professional and semi-professional stagings, concerts and movies of operas which have been recorded in full-length . Some exceptions are made due to historical and artistic consideration.

We exclude amateur and school stagings of poor standard, extremely poor private fan videos and excerpts of operas. Some exceptions are made due to historical and artistic consideration

Please send an email to operaonvideo@gmail.com and describe the video you are suggesting and where we can find it

We do not provide any registration and login to keep the site simple. All access is free and unlimited. You can become a member of the Opera On Video Group on Facebook

There are several software products available to download YouTube Videos. There are free online services available too which we do not recommend because of spamming and other risks.

You can of course bookmark the video with your webbrowser. We support an additional method: Drag and Drop. This video shows you how to do this. This is for PC only and you may have to clear your Browser cache (files only) for it to work

Under “Information about the Recording” there is a field “subtitles” (not always).
It contains one or several codes as follows:
nosubs No subtitles available
yessubs Subtitles available
ensubs English subtitles
desubs German subtitles
frsubs French subtitles
itsubs Italian subtitles
essubs Spanish subtitles
jpsubs Japanese subtitles
cnsubs Chinese subtitles
rusubs Russian subtitles
othersubs Subtitles in other languages
gensubs Subtitles automatically generated by YouTube
multsubs Subtitles can be translated to many languages by YouTube

When there are several videos for a performance, then the subtitles information will always be about the video recording where subtitles are available. Thus there could be a video without subtitles, but the DVD or paid streaming of it has subtitles. If you want subtitles you have to get the DVD or pay for the stream.

You can use any of these codes/keywords in search.

The availabability of subtitles differs depending on the original video. Some have burned-in subtitles, others have subtitles which can be turned on and many have no subtitles at all. If the video is from YouTube you can sometimes use the YouTube generated subtitles. These are often not very good but probably better than nothing.

The pre-requisite is that the video is published on YouTube which you can see with the YouTube logo in the lower right corner and that subtitles are enabled which can be seen with the subtitles icon left to the logo. Here is a video showing how to turn on English subtitles

Videos which are available at full-length without extra cost are prefixed with FULL in the title. In addition you can search for full operas: in the search query  add the term “fullopera” to find videos of the whole opera. A search for “otello verdi fullopera” will give you all fully view-able recordings of Verdi’s Otello.

Keep in mind that sometimes full operas can only be viewed with the red button further down on the page. The video on top could be an excerpt!

We have improved the search: Search is now for full words and exact match. When using several search terms ALL of these have to be found in order to give a result (AND condition).

You can now add the term “fullopera” to find videos view-able at full length at no cost. A search for “otello verdi fullopera” will give you all full length view-able videos of Verdi’s Otello.
You can use the term “staged” to just get staged operas (concerts and other will  be excluded).
You can search for subtitles using one of the keywords such as “ensubs” or “desubs” .
You can exclude terms by using the NOT parameter (or prefix with -):  “Bizet NOT Carmen” “Mascagni -Cavalleria” .
You can use a category as search term to limit results: “Hvorostovsky Interviews” “Kaufmann Concerts”

When you search for an opera you should use two search words for a better result otherwise for example searching for “Otello” will give you hits on both Rossini and Verdi. Search for “Otello Verdi” instead.

Available videos can be purchased or streamed. For Not Available operas no proper legal source is known at present. There may be pirated copies available.
We do not refer to pirated opera videos.

This message is typically from YouTube when a video has been restricted by the publisher from playing in certain countries or regions. You could try another country by using a VPS.

Please add a comment on the page or send an email to operaonvideo@gmail.com and describe the error or the additional information. Please include a link to the page of the video

Some streaming services use geo-blocking to restrict which countries are allowed to view the stream. You may get an error message. Read about geo-blocking and what to do about it

This is very subjective but we use the following guideline:
5- Blue Ray Quality
4- Streaming, broadcast and DVD with excellent quality
3- older DVD quality, broadcast with medium quality
2-Poor Quality
1-Almost unbearable

Not necessarily. It depends on the source of the excerpt. It could be of lesser quality.

Complete opera recordings on YouTube and other services are sometimes split into several parts. In such cases we show the first part in the embedded video. Sometimes the video is a playlist and is automatically continued after the first part. Otherwise we link the second part with the RED BUTTON “FULL VIDEO” (unless there is a DVD linked to the red button). If there are more than two parts then these are linked below the lower red button: the first VIDEO link shows the third part, the second VIDEO the fourth part and so on. If none of this is true you have to look in YouTube for the other parts: Search YouTube with the same YouTube title excluding part or act.

There can be several reasons for this. If you get a message Wrong Format you probably have a problem with your installation. Have a look at this ADVICE