WQXR Operavore streams opera around the clock from New York City, covering everything from the biggest arias to full productions, news from the international opera scene and interviews with the artists behind it. You can stream it free right now on Radio Shuffle, wherever you are in the world, no account or app needed.
Born as a Website Before It Was a Stream
Operavore actually started life in January 2012 as a website and blog, not a radio stream, before growing into the all-opera web channel it is today, according to a Current.org report on the project's expansion. WQXR general manager Graham Parker called the move the perfect next step in the station's expanded opera coverage, aiming to appeal to devoted opera fans and casual listeners at once rather than treating the genre as a niche audience.
From Web Channel to a Nationally Syndicated Show
A year after the stream launched, WQXR added a weekly Operavore radio program on January 19, 2013, hosted by WQXR's Naomi Lewin and distributed nationally rather than kept local to New York. That progression, blog to stream to syndicated broadcast, shows how much appetite WQXR found for dedicated opera coverage once it started building it.
A Classical Station With Roots in Experimental Television
Operavore runs under WQXR, a station with an unusually tangled history. WQXR traces back to W2XR, an experimental mechanical television station John V. L. Hogan and Elliott Sanger launched in New York on March 26, 1929, according to Wikipedia's history of the station. It converted to AM radio as WQXR in 1936, and The New York Times Company bought it in 1944, making it the paper's own radio station for decades. A complex three-way frequency trade in October 2009 moved WQXR's classical format to 105.9 FM under New York Public Radio, the nonprofit that also runs WNYC, for an $11.5 million deal covering the license, equipment, music library and website.
Tune In
Built from a blog into a full-time opera stream and a syndicated radio show, WQXR Operavore gives opera a dedicated home inside one of American public radio's oldest classical brands. Stream it free on Radio Shuffle to hear it live.