The "new" Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

[Esmeralda]

No ticket check for me either and no one wanted to look at my backpack (not last friday and also not yesterday, came both times straight from the airport). Though I got asked yesterday if there was anything in my bag that wasn´t appropriate for the ROH. At first I wanted to ask which things weren´t appropriate for the ROH (tons of fast fast food? stuffed animals for throwing on the stage?) but then I just explained my situation and then the usher said, these things would be okay - well, I am glad that pyjamas and a toothbrush don´t offend the ROH🤔😉

[alison]

Gin disguised as a bottle of water.

[bangorballetboy]

Just now, alison said:

Gin disguised as a bottle of water.

 

No, that's the Coli!

[alison]

And the Albert Hall.  I wondered if it had spread further!

[Balletfanp]

7 hours ago, bangorballetboy said:

 

I‘m struggling to see the issue here. Was there someone in your seat who had to be removed? Sounds like you had seamless and easy access to the theatre, with no problems. Did you enjoy the show?

 

Yes, I did enjoy the show and will be sharing my thoughts in the appropriate thread 🙂 

 

Seamless and easy, yes - and the staff were all extremely welcoming and friendly - but I was surprised that it seemed that just anyone could wander in if they wanted to chance it. And it seemed inconsistent as I spoke to others there who had had to produce their tickets.

[RuthE]

3 hours ago, alison said:

And the Albert Hall.  I wondered if it had spread further!

 

The only venue where I *have* ever smuggled alcohol in (and never been challenged either!) 

[Balletfanp]

11 minutes ago, RuthE said:

 

The only venue where I *have* ever smuggled alcohol in (and never been challenged either!) 

 

When I went to the cinema relay of Mayerling, a row of old ladies behind me were busted for smuggling in alcohol by an usher who looked about 16 🤣. They made the situation worse by trying to hide some of it, only to be told by the usher to “hand it all over,” and it was duly confiscated until the end of the performance. They were all giggling like schoolgirls - it was very funny!

 

But the staff would have been fine if they had bought their mini bottles of wine from the trolley at ludicrously inflated prices....🙄

[alison]

You have a trolley?!  We usually have to spend the entire interval queuing if we want drinks, ice cream, etc.

[Balletfanp]

Yes, it’s a trolley, but we have to queue for the trolley. It’s why I don’t bother....!

[JohnS]

Apologies yet again for singing the praises of our Keswick cinema but we're completely spoiled: complimentary drinks, coffee on arrival and grape juice during the intervals, and a very reasonably priced bar.  As Brian Redhead used to say 'It's brighter in the North' - I've paraphrased as I wouldn't want to offend friends in the South.

[alison]

Now, if my local provided that type of service, I'd be less offended at the prospect of 4 tickets for £100!

[JohnS]

Sotto voce - £15.00 at Keswick.

[ninamargaret]

An old friend of mine, now gone to the big opera house in the sky, was a frequent visitor to opera in the 50s and early 60s. He used to boast that he rarely bought tickets - just mixed with the audience, usually in the old amphi, and squeezed his way in! I believe in those days the seating was pretty basic, more or less just benches. Perhaps management wants to reintroduce this practice?

[Pas de Quatre]

In those days the Amphi had a separate entrance & concrete stairwell so the hoi polloi wouldn't get in the way of the poshos! Many people just went down to get some air in Floral Street during the intervals. It was common knowledge that it would be easy to join the audience as they returned. In fact one well known ballet master used to recommend it to impoverished ballet students!

[David]

9 minutes ago, Pas de Quatre said:

I It was common knowledge that it would be easy to join the audience as they returned.

 

And during the first interval at the proms!!!!

[capybara]

2 hours ago, Pas de Quatre said:

In those days the Amphi had a separate entrance & concrete stairwell so the hoi polloi wouldn't get in the way of the poshos! Many people just went down to get some air in Floral Street during the intervals. It was common knowledge that it would be easy to join the audience as they returned. In fact one well known ballet master used to recommend it to impoverished ballet students!

 

And............ some patrons who were to be seen showing their tickets at that infamous Floral Street entrance were quickly spotted down in the Stalls Circle as there was 'a secret staircase'. Never found it myself  !

[Dawnstar]

This is a bit off topic but I hope I can get away with it as some recent posts have been talking about the ROH in the past. When I was at the ROH on Saturday for Simon Boccanegra, getting temporarily lost finding how you now get into stalls circle left, I found myself wondering this. Where you now go through to the newly Opened Up area, and previously went through to the link corridor and cloakroom, underneath the staircase up to the Crush Bar, what was there before the Floral Hall was incorporated into the ROH in the late 90s? I first went to the ROH in 2004 so never saw it before the last major redevelopment.

[alison]

Nothing, I think.  The top bit of the Floral Hall (without the underneath bit) was being used as a scenery storage area, but I think that was next door.  There was no public access to it from the ROH, if I recall correctly.  Gosh, it's so long ago ...

[bridiem]

I rather liked having the separate amphi entrance, in fact. It was like having our own separate part of the theatre. (Though all the stairs would kill me now.) I only go for the auditorium and the performance and the grandeur of the rest of the building doesn't really matter to me. I like some of it but I don't feel at home there, as I used to in the old amphi.

[RuthE]

10 hours ago, bridiem said:

I rather liked having the separate amphi entrance, in fact. It was like having our own separate part of the theatre. (Though all the stairs would kill me now.) I only go for the auditorium and the performance and the grandeur of the rest of the building doesn't really matter to me. I like some of it but I don't feel at home there, as I used to in the old amphi.

 

At the risk of going off topic, I felt the same when the Coliseum got rid of the separate Balcony entrance.  There used to be no external noise (the bar was halfway up the stairs rather than out the back of the auditorium) and latecomers were accommodated downstairs in the main part of the house until the interval, so there was no disruption after the performance had started.

 

I only started attending ROH a year before the closure, and didn't live in London at the time, so only sat in the old Amphitheatre 3 times and never got used to it.

[Dawnstar]

15 hours ago, alison said:

Nothing, I think.  The top bit of the Floral Hall (without the underneath bit) was being used as a scenery storage area, but I think that was next door.  There was no public access to it from the ROH, if I recall correctly.  Gosh, it's so long ago ...

 

Thanks Alison. So just a blank wall there then. I wish I'd seen the pre-90s state of the ROH. I've read books written 1930s-50s with characters visiting & it annoys me that I can't envisage exactly what it would have been like.

[Jane S]

21 hours ago, ninamargaret said:

An old friend of mine, now gone to the big opera house in the sky, was a frequent visitor to opera in the 50s and early 60s. He used to boast that he rarely bought tickets - just mixed with the audience, usually in the old amphi, and squeezed his way in! I believe in those days the seating was pretty basic, more or less just benches. Perhaps management wants to reintroduce this practice?

 

The back few rows of the amphi used to be called the gallery, and just had wooden bench seats. They were taken out in 1964.

(I don't remember seeing them - I think I bought tickets downstairs in my early days and moved up to the amphi later!)

 

Edited to add: Just looked out some of my programmes from the early 60s and found I did actually sit up there sometimes - I used to staple the ticket stub to the programme and several say 'Amphitheatre Stalls' - but I still don't remember the gallery.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Jane S

[alison]

Presumably that's the bit shown early on in The Red Shoes?

[Douglas Allen]

Replying to Jane S and Alison,

Yes - the amphi was reconstructed in 1964 and how it looked was shown in The Red Shoes. The amphi gallery was bench seats and was usually first come, first seated. The division between gallery and amphi stalls was marked by a wooden divider which raised the gallery part slightly above the level of the amphi stalls. The gallery had a separate entrance from the amphi stalls (a kind of further division of hoi polloi) and the amphi stalls had numbered seats (though narrower than the seats downstairs and without armrests except at the end of rows). The amphi stalls corresponded to rows A-G and the gallery corresponded to row H and beyond.

[alison]

Hence the intrusive superstructure if you're sitting in the end seats in Row H, I take it.  Thank you, Douglas.

[Douglas Allen]

12 minutes ago, alison said:

Hence the intrusive superstructure if you're sitting in the end seats in Row H, I take it.  Thank you, Douglas.

 

Yes, I always tried to avoid those seats like the plague!

[capybara]

I just wanted to say that I had an  amazing evening yesterday watching The Nutcracker relayed live to The Linbury.

 

[For more, please see the Nutcracker thread.]

 

I'm mentioning it here because this was everything 'open up' should be. As 'mixed' an audience as there could possibly be, affordable prices (I paid £17); a great venue with a wonderful view of the action; a real 'buzz'; masses of applause for something which wasn't live; and the icing on the cake of a live curtain call from O'Sullivan, Sambe, Nunez, Muntagirov and Avis.

 

I can't remember a more enjoyable night at the ROH.

 

Well done ROH - you hit the jackpot with this one.

 

[alison]

2 hours ago, capybara said:

affordable prices (I paid £17)

 

Careful, capybara, don't want to give them ideas ...  

[Guest]

13 hours ago, alison said:

 

Careful, capybara, don't want to give them ideas ...  

What.. you mean they might make all tickets £17.00?!

[Mary]

Yes be careful- they might have the bright idea of putting the live performance in the Linbury for the super rich at hundreds of pounds per ticket and screening it to the rest of us in the opera house for £17........

 

 

 

[Ian Macmillan]

Meanwhile, at a cinema not far from Covent Garden:

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/film-fans-left-reeling-by-40-cinema-seats-9f50pzrpk?shareToken=030688a3fe33d45422e30003cb9bd96b

 

 

[Sim]

A missed opportunity for The Times.  Instead of (or in addition to) saying that these cinema prices were almost the same price as a Premier League football match, they could have said that these prices were more expensive than several layers of tickets at the ROH.  It would have counter-balanced the constant press assertions about tickets costing £120 there, and most people being none the wiser.  

[alison]

Sorry, Quintus, I didn't mean to remove your post completely:

 

18 minutes ago, Quintus said:

I've been to a couple of daytime events in the Floral Hall recently - one of the Month of Sundays mornings and today the Ballet Studio Live:Class, and I thought both were well run events and a good use of the space to generate additional revenue.  Today apparently sold out quite early, and seems set to become a regular feature.

 

Today's dancers were mostly from the Aub Jebsen programme , which I hadn't been aware of before. Several were quite impressive, so fingers crossed for them getting full contracts in due course.   Taisuko Nakao had some serious height in his jumps, and of the girls Katherina Nikelski and  Yu Hang looked very neat and accomplished, while Lania Atkins was also both graceful and striking.

 

More of this kind of thing!

 

I've used your post to start a new thread on the Ballet Studio Live series.