Philadelphia offers binge-watching opera festival
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In a downtown theater, five teenagers take refuge at a site once occupied by members of the radical group MOVE. Across the street, a serial killer terrorizes Victorian London. Up the block, the bird-catcher Papageno longs for true love. A bit further afield, spectators at two museums watch opera amid the art.
Welcome to O17, as Opera Philadelphia is calling its festival season, a 12-day explosion of works new and old performed more or less simultaneously at diverse venues in the heart of the nation's fifth-largest city.
"The idea is to kind of Netflix the opera experience, to package a binge-watching opportunity," said David Devan, the company's general director.