Opera Philadelphia Cancels 2020 O20 Festival

Opera Philadelphia has canceled O20, this year's iteration of its annual fall opera festival, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

The company has also announced that it will postpone or move online all but one of the live productions it originally planned for the 2020-21 season.

Instead, Opera Philadelphia will launch a series of online performances to be shown on a new Opera Philadelphia Channel.

"The postponing of in-real-life, live performance was largely about safety," said Opera Philadelphia general director and president David B. Devan. "The challenges of safely producing opera are significant, so being able to gather artists was not possible. We know that droplets and duration so far are emerging as the leading factors for contagion, and opera, well, we have a lot of droplets and we do it in close proximity for durations of time."

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