There’s an App for that – medici.tv

Last week, I reminded my Dad that if he was free on Friday afternoon, he might want to check out Don Carlo from the Salzburg Festival on medici.tv. He replied, “Yes, I read about that on your blog.” (Hey, my Dad reads my blog! Cool!) On Friday, he called me at work during a scene change to let me know he was watching the broadcast, and he wanted to know if I felt envious. (Nice. Of course I did!)

Now, I’ve complained more than once that we are not permitted to stream audio or video on my company network (yes, I have a non-musical day job.) But sometimes I will pop a DVD into the computer during slow times. Not long ago, to get around the streaming ban at work, I downloaded the nifty medici.tv iPhone app. So, after I finished talking to Dad, I quickly logged into the app to watch some of the opera (really it’s more of a listen; watching an opera on a iPhone is far from ideal) up to the first intermission.

The picture was not fabulous, and the video and audio were not always 100% in synch all the time (possibly due more to my signal reception than to the app itself, I am working with an iPhone 4 on a 3G network), but the sound was decent iPhone quality. And I got to hear/see some of the opera while it was really live.

I've used the medici.tv app to watch/listen to instrumental concerts as well, where the video element is nice, but less essential for full musical enjoyment. The interface is almost as easy to use as the web version, but annoyingly, it insists that I log in every time.

The app is free and available at the you-know-what store, plus there's an Android version. You can watch all the same free programs as you can watch online.

It’s not the ideal way to watch opera, but in a pinch, when you can’t be at home for a medici.tv program, it’s nice to know there’s an app for that!