Eight hours of live streams and special events from across the UK
Highlights include an opera singer breaking a wine glass with her voice, plus a spine-tingling performance from Lesley Garrett
Partners include the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, English Touring Opera, Opera North, Glyndebourne, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera and Northern Ireland Opera
BBC Arts Digital is also working with the V&A, BBC Radio 3, Tomorrow’s World and Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry, supported by the British Council
#OperaPassion
BBC Radio 3
Less than half an hour to go to help choose tonight's opera on Radio 3. Will it be Gounod, Mozart, Puccini or Wagner? If you can't make up your mind, perhaps James Naughtie, Shelley von Strunckel, Harriet Harman or Stephen Fry can persuade you? Let them bend your ear about their favourite opera.
BBC Two
In this new BBC Two series historian Lucy Worsley explores how history and opera go hand in hand.
In the first episode, Lucy investigates four cities and four operas embedded in the cauldron of European politics between the 17th and 19th centuries.
She begins in Venice, where Claudio Monteverdi, external invented modern opera with The Coronation of Poppea. Then to Vienna, where Mozart's subversive masterpiece The Marriage of Figaro held a mirror up to a society where the Enlightenment was beginning to break down the old feudal order, and Beethoven wrote Fidelio, an opera that embraced the French Revolutionary radical ideals of liberty, equality and brotherhood. Finally, Lucy travels to Milan, where Verdi's Slaves' Chorus in his opera Nabucco captured the hopes and dreams of the Italian people as they moved towards independence and a united nation.
Teatro La Scala
#OperaPassion is global. Earlier La Scala live-streamed its Nabucco rehearsals conducted by Nello Santi with an interview with director Daniele Abbado! #OperaPassion, external
Even opera singers have bad days at the office...
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#OperaPassion
BBC Radio 4
It's nearly tea time. Peach Melba, external anyone (named after Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba)? Or a Joconde Opera Cake - a decorative almond-flavored sponge cake made in layers?
But for the full menu, go to the Radio 4 Food programme's Food in Opera, external: Sheila Dillon hears the story of food told through 400 years of music history. Gluttonous composers, cuisine centred plotlines and singers needing nourishment.
We get to listen in to stories of a sugar-addicted Mozart, Pavarotti's post-performance meals and find out who gave their name to Pasta Norma. Listen or download., external
Find out what it takes to take an opera on tour.
Tomorrow's World
Life's big questions answered
In the first of today's live experiments, we found out just how loud opera singers can sing with the BBC Tomorrow’s World team at Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry.
Lindsey Chapman introduces the experiment, with Trevor Cox - Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford - and opera singers Iain Henderson and Monica Bell, who both study at the Royal Northern College of Music.
Discover why opera is acoustically so different from pop...
The BBC Tomorrow’s World team perform a live experiment.
#OperaPassion
English Touring Opera perform an extract from the children's opera, Bessie's Wings, an opera devised with children in Lambeth, about the first African American female pilot.
Opera singer Lauren Coulter attempts to shatter a wine glass with her voice - presented by Lindsay Chapman from the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.
Opera singer Lauren Coulter attempts to shatter a wine glass with her voice.
#OperaPassion
From Central Baptist Church near the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton, the WNO Chorus performs extracts from Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II which they are performing tonight. The rehearsal is led by chorus master, Stephen Harris, Watch the rehearsal and control the 360-degree view., external
From Dvorak's opera Rusalka
You can find out much more about this aria on the Royal Opera House's website , external
Southampton
We'll be getting an exclusive sneak preview from the WNO chorus live in glorious 360 shortly. They'll be practising sections from Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus (The Bat) ahead of tonight's performance at the Southampton Mayflower Theatre.
At any one time, the in-house Chorus could be working on repertoire from up to six operas!
Read more about the story of Die Fledermaus, external
Image source, Welsh National Opera/Bill CooperWelsh National Opera's production of Die Fledermaus
Idloes Owen, an idealistic ex coal-miner, established Welsh National Opera in 1946, starting as a group of amateurs rehearsing above a car showroom. It is now Europe's most active touring opera company, reaching 140,000 people each year in Wales and much of England.
V&A Museum
We need more good opera roles for "older glamorous women" on relevant subjects - Lesley Garrett tells curator Kate Bailey as she prepares to perform at the V&A for #OperaPassion
V&A Museum
National Treasure Lesley Garrett's in the Tapestries Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum about to delight us with a performance.
V&A Museum
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Image source, Scottish OperaView of the beach, Islay
Bowmore Distillery, Islay
We're off to the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides shortly to join Scottish Opera for a live performance from their Opera Highlights tour.
Bowmore Distillery, Islay
Founded in 1962, Scottish Opera has championed opera in Scotland ever since, performing wherever and whenever it can. In 1974 Scottish Opera purchased the Theatre Royal Glasgow, which reopened in 1975 as Scotland’s first national opera house.
On average Scottish Opera travels over 5000 miles to visit around 50 venues each year! It also champions new work from Scottish talent, including commissioning early work from Sir James Macmillan, external, Thea Musgrave, external and Judith Weir, external. In 1979, comedian Billy Connelly appeared in Scottish Opera's production of Die Fledermaus.
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And it worked! Here's the moment our opera singer shattered a wine glass with her voice...
The moment it happened
Tomorrow's World
Life's big questions answered
It's all about the frequency of the vibrations - if Lauren's voice is at the right frequency to vibrate the glass enough it will shatter...
Image source, Image: Creative commonsBroken glass
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