Digital books, recordings of plays, concerts, cinema, documentaries, opera, virtual visits to museums... Platforms such as CaixaForum, the Teatroteca, eBiblio, L'Auditori Play, MyOperaPlayer or Liceu bring culture to every corner of the world. geography and cross borders, often offering their content for free. Here is a small list of some of the best.
It is perhaps the most ambitious and unique project of the new era of digital culture in Spain. Launched by CaixaForum, the large platform brings together more than two thousand cultural and scientific content, half of it its own, and has the cost of a medium-sized physical CaixaForum for the La Caixa Foundation: five million euros per year. What is most successful on the platform are documentaries, whether about art, design, photography or music... and there is a real passion for biographies.
www.caixaforumplus.org
Loans of digital content in public libraries are on the rise, whether newspapers, magazines, books, audiobooks or audiovisuals. In Spain there is, on the one hand, eBiblio, a free public digital reading service promoted by the Ministry of Culture that can be used by any citizen who is a member of a public library participating in the project and knows the access codes – either through a browser or app–, and Catalonia has its Digital Biblio with the same condition of being a user of a physical library.
www.cultura.gob.es/cultura/areas/bibliotecas/mc/eBiblio/como-usarlo.html and biblioteca.ebiblio.cat
For theater lovers, although it is not the sector that has fared best from the attempt at digitalization, there are resources such as the Theater Library of the Documentation and Performing Arts Center of the Ministry of Culture, which contains no less than 1,900 recordings of theater, dance, circus and music. The Teatroteca offers online loans of recordings and complete shows, from Lluïsa Cunillé's Islàndia to Mrs. Dalloway starring Blanca Portillo or zarzuelas such as La tabernera del Puerto. The user must request the resource and return it on time.
For its part, the Barcelona Teatre Lliure, which launched a digital window during the pandemic with very well recorded and edited content, ended up closing it but they have the innovative Arxiu Lliure, the new space where they store the theater's heritage online, from photographs to programs , and also recordings, many made by the company itself, of legendary shows such as Leonci i Lena, Amfitrió, La pantera imperial by Carles Santos or Primera història d'Esther, which cannot be accessed directly but can be accessed with a request form .
Teatroteca.teatro.es and arxiu.teatrelliure.com
The two great state operas have separate platforms. The Teatro Real has MyOperaPlayer, which has made the commitment for its content to sign agreements with fifty opera theaters and dance companies from around the world and which currently has 3,100 subscribers and 90,000 registered users for its free content. For its part, the Gran Teatre del Liceu launched the Liceu Live platform in 2022 with MediaPro, with a digital subscription of five titles per season in streaming and produced with numerous cameras and accessories of all kinds that sought a unique experience that wants to be a mirror of the physical season. Now it is stopped due to the negotiation of the rights with the theater's choir and orchestra.
www.myoperaplayer.com and liceuplus.com
International museum institutions have launched free tours of their spaces room by room on websites such as the Hermitage (hermitagemuseum.org), where you can literally enter for free to take a virtual, 360-degree tour of each space and work, Click on the information for each one of them, just like the Uffizi Gallery. In Spain it can be done at the Thyssen-Bornemisza (www.museothyssen.org/thyssenmultimedia), which also offers virtual visits to its temporary exhibitions such as Maestras or Lucian Freud. In addition, they have virtual guided tours for five euros with the secrets of the collection.
The Prado also offers virtual visits (www.museodelprado.es/visitas-virtuales) of temporary exhibitions such as that of Guido Reni for 2.5 euros. The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya has online exhibitions such as the one in Campañà (www.museunacional.cat/es/expósitos-en-linea) and the National Archaeological Museum is visible online (www.manvirtual.es).
One of the digital windows that was born with the pandemic was that of L'Auditori Play, which is currently free and only requires registration to see or listen to its concerts. Without a doubt one of the global references in the field of classical music is the Digital Concert Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic, which operates by subscription.
www.auditori.cat/es/play-2 and www.digitalconcerthall.com/es
