San Francisco Opera has launched a free online hub of historic recordings and rare archival interviews, as part of its centenary celebrations. Called Streaming the First Century, it will provide free entry to selected recordings from San Francisco Opera’s past, thematically inspired by upcoming performances this autumn.

The first of the four initial instalments to be released includes complete recordings of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk from 1981 and Janáček’s Jenůfa from 1980. Available alongside are excerpts of further works by Shostakovich and Janacek, plus music by Mussorgsky, and a feature called Spanning the Decades which offers behind-the-scenes conversations including with past and present heads of props, hair & make-up and chorus.

• Streaming the First Century, SFO’s online archive

Complimenting the complete recordings, interviews have been released with Sopranos Sena Jurinac and Elisabeth Söderström discussing the Jenůfa performance, and conductor Calvin Simmons and stage director Gerald Freedman on their performance of Lady Macbeth.

Throughout the autumn season, the opera company will release three more sessions of content, the next due for release on October 10 will feature full recordings of Massenet’s Werther (1978) and Charpentier’s Louise (1999), inspired by Poulenc’s Dialogues.