It’s taken from late October 2018 to move from 500 video recordings in the archive to 600.  So that’s 2-3 recordings per month which sounds about right.  It’s slower than in the past for two reasons.  There just isn’t as much historic material I haven’t already seen and the rate of new releases, unsurprisingly, slowed down quite a bit during the pandemic.

Most of the statistics remain essentially unchanged.  For example, “language of performance” remains steady at 36% Italian, 25% German and 12% English.  Even “century of composition” has barely shifted with only four 21st century works added.  The same is true of “location of performance”. Somewhat surprisingly Theater an der Wien hasn’t broken into the top tier even though it feels like it has featured prominently!

The only real changes are in date of recording and technology.  285/600 recordings were made in 2010 or more recently (20 since 2020).  74 out of the last 100 recordings are Blu-ray (2 of them 4K UHD) which is a fairly significant shift. since only 137 of the first 500 were in the higher res format.

The top works are all by Mozart with 14 Don Giovannis and 11 each for Così, Marriage of Figaro and (various versions of) Magic Flute.  Nothing else manages more than 8 (Carmen) with 7 each for Wozzeck, Peter Grimes, Elektra and Ariadne auf Naxos.  Unsurprisingly this makes Mozart top composer with 68 followed by Wagner (39), Strauss (31) and Verdi and Rossini (30 each).

Unlike four years ago I now have access to Universal Group releases as well as Euroarts and the Naxos line up so it will be interesting to see what that changes since Universal basically monopolises both Bayreuth and the Met.  I’m also wondering whether the rate odf releases will pick up now most houses are back up and running.