ROH Autumn 23 booking

LinMM · August 3, 2023

Have just PM’d you Blossom!!!

Blossom · August 3, 2023

55 minutes ago, Blossom said:

If anyone wants a single ticket to Magri/Corrales on 7 Nov (Row B stalls circle centre, bar exit side, £125), my friend is no longer able to join me from abroad due to a work conference. I'm strategically holding onto the ticket because the date is off sale. No commitment needs to be made right now, but PM me if you want to be pencilled in on my spreadsheet...

Just to say I now have 2 options on my spare ticket which I think is more than enough!

San Perregrino · August 3, 2023

On 01/08/2023 at 18:16, Bluebird said:

An intriguing email just received from the ROH:

We look forward to welcoming you to Don Quixote on 7 November.

For your awareness, we have taken all remaining seats off sale for reasons we are excited to announce in the coming weeks. Please be assured that this will have no impact on your booking or on your experience of the performance.

what i have learned today:

- this is not a Friends event

- 7th November will now be an invited audience excepting those patrons and friends who have already bought tickets which will be honoured.

- a public onsale is not anticipated at this point, but an announcement will be made if this changes.

- the performance will still be live-streamed in cinema.

unfortunately no further information can be provided at this stage.

LinMM · August 3, 2023

Oh well we will just have to wait and see….as long as the invited guests are not being given a load of “freebie’s” as usually in these circumstances people only go because it is free and will never have any intention of paying for something they are only vaguely interested in on other occasions.

alison · August 3, 2023

Most of the sort of "invited audiences" the ROH normally (appears to) invite(s) aren't the sort you'd necessarily invite to a live cinema broadcast, though. I think that's the discrepancy which really confuses me. I'll wait to see more, while fuming.

San Perregrino · August 3, 2023

36 minutes ago, PeterS said:

what i have learned today:

- this is not a Friends event

- 7th November will now be an invited audience excepting those patrons and friends who have already bought tickets which will be honoured.

- a public onsale is not anticipated at this point, but an announcement will be made if this changes.

- the performance will still be live-streamed in cinema.

unfortunately no further information can be provided at this stage.

Hmm well if I was in my 75th birthday year and I was patron of the ROH, I might be tempted to throw a royal command performance and invite my nearest and dearest. (Logistical nightmare but huge PR coup)

Edited August 3, 2023 by PeterS

bridiem · August 3, 2023

15 minutes ago, PeterS said:

Hmm well if I was in my 75th birthday year and I was patron of the ROH, I might be tempted to throw a royal command performance and invite my nearest and dearest. (Logistical nightmare but huge PR coup)

But there have regularly been royal galas/attendees and they don't fill out the rest of the auditorium (and I'm sure wouldn't ask to do so, unless it was something to do with one of his charities I suppose). Whether or not the King is there, I'd be inclined to think that the invited audience will be of the sort that will display the ROH being very inclusive etc etc and being seen to be so by the larger than usual audience because it's a live screening.

Edited August 3, 2023 by bridiem

LinMM · August 3, 2023

Yes this has occurred to me that it’s something to do with Royalty as his birthday is in November but there are three other performances closer to his birthday with let’s say slightly more established Principals!!
But would Royalty really need half the opera house 🤔

I can only think it’s Bidens state visit and the seats are for his security entourage lol!
I know we should stop speculating about this so won’t mention again unless meanwhile I get any enlightenment from the powers that be in opera house!

Emeralds · August 3, 2023

I sympathise with members who had planned to book 7 Nov. The sales/box office team should have blocked off the date as “not available for general booking” from the outset. That way patrons can make plans for other dates. It’s easier to release sections for sale later on if they don’t need all the seating than to back track later, like they’ve done here. Not very considerate and looks very amateurish.

Lizbie1 · August 3, 2023

1 minute ago, Emeralds said:

I sympathise with members who had planned to book 7 Nov. The sales/box office team should have blocked off the date as “not available for general booking” from the outset. That way patrons can make plans for other dates. It’s easier to release sections for sale later on if they don’t need all the seating than to back track later, like they’ve done here. Not very considerate and looks very amateurish.

But this assumes that they had prior notice. My guess is that they didn't.

Rob S · August 3, 2023

I reckon the bulk of the invited guests will be connected to the King’s charities with the King also in attendance.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Rob S

Rob S · August 3, 2023

And now I’ve just received the email talked about above 🤔

Sim · August 3, 2023

Good theory Rob. I have a ticket for that night so the suspense is killing me. Not.

Blossom · August 3, 2023

38 minutes ago, Rob S said:

And now I’ve just received the email talked about above 🤔

Yes , I just received it too.

LinMM · August 3, 2023

If it’s rewarding people for Charity work I won’t mind so much.
But how does that work?
Are the people invited just given a chance to book at reduced prices?
Or does some Bod pay for everybody’s tickets?

Don Q Fan · August 3, 2023

Is anyone able to throw any light on my issue with seat booking in a smartphone?

I can never see available seats on my smartphone with this new seat ticket system they've got, any ideas what to do? It's all just grey. It briefly flashes the available seats but immediately goes grey so I HAVE to use a PC which is v annoying.

JNC · August 3, 2023

Is it to announce Charles as patron of RB? Currently is it still listed as former Queen Elizabeth (or something along those lines). Or maybe Queen Camilla?

and some new curtains perhaps?

alison · August 3, 2023

I thought the curtains were staying as they were?

LinMM · August 4, 2023

I wish I could help you Don Q but I don’t usually have any problem booking seats with my smart phone ….well as long as ROH website working properly which is most of the time except for main booking days.
I use an Apple iPhone (13).
The only thing I have to do is enlarge the coloured dots a bit or it’s trickier to get them to respond but the seat map does usually come up in the normal way.
I don’t know whether if you have a slightly older smart phone model there is some incompatibility with the newer ROH website.
I’ve got an older IPad with only iOS 9 on it and it’s practically useless now as you have to have the hardware to operate the more up to date operating systems. It’s annoying as the iPad still works really well as a piece of “machinery” but you get forced into having to buy a newer “machine” as it were because nothing works with it!!
However I hope there turns out to be a simpler solution to your problem.

JNC · August 4, 2023

10 hours ago, alison said:

I thought the curtains were staying as they were?

It was just a guess. I imagine the curtains will stay, more for cost reasons rather than anything else, until they’re worn down!

bangorballetboy · August 4, 2023

The curtains are staying as they are until they need to be replaced. As mentioned before, existing post boxes and railings don't get changed when the monarch changes.

San Perregrino · August 4, 2023

Sold out

ALL TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT. CHECK BACK LATER FOR RETURNS.

bridiem · August 4, 2023

Yikes! Who knows what was going on there...

August 4, 2023

Opening night is nearly sold out. 60 tickets last I checked

Geoff · August 4, 2023

4 minutes ago, bridiem said:

Yikes! Who knows what was going on there...

Yet another jape from theatreland's most amusing website. Sadly, I just looked and there are plenty of seats at all (high) prices. So seems to be another e-muddle. You'd think that by now someone might have had a word.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Geoff

bridiem · August 4, 2023

21 minutes ago, Geoff said:

Yet another jape from theatreland's most amusing website.

It is pretty ridiculous. I noticed this morning that the list of dancers at the bottom of the 'About' page is way out of date: https://www.roh.org.uk/about/the-royal-ballet How difficult can it be to do these basic things?

alison · August 4, 2023

39 minutes ago, PeterS said:

For a brief moment earlier it looked as though the new pricing policy had vindicated itself as I got this when looking at Don Q availability 🙂 ??

30 SEPTEMBER 2023

SATURDAY, 7.30PM

MAIN STAGE

GUIDANCE: Content suitable for all, subject to House rules

Conducted by Valery Ovsyanikov

CAST

Marianela Nuñez, Vadim Muntagirov

Sold out

ALL TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT. CHECK BACK LATER FOR RETURNS.

That is what I get when my computer is disconnected from the internet. Took me quite a while to realise, but the first thing I now do is check the internet connection.

JohnS · August 19, 2023

I’ve been meaning to add a few thoughts on pricing now we’ve seen the detail for Winter 2023-24 and there’s more coming to light about the ROH’s experimental pricing. Apologies for the delay but I’ve been busy completing my 2nd round of the Lake District fells this year (and starting a 3rd round) so l’m still catching up on the Forum.

Having thought a little more about pricing, it seems there are a handful of productions which are piloting experimental pricing. But the majority of productions are not part of the experiment. They continue a pattern of pricing where we’ve seen a plethora of different seat maps and huge anomalies in prices, amongst the worst being the extortionate prices for Stalls Circle Sides bench seats - £112 for last season’s Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. The ROH has not addressed these criticisms and we see extortionate prices charged for these bench seats for Nutcracker (£108) and Dante (£80), the same price charged for Balcony Stalls restricted view seats. But if experimental pricing proves successful and is fully rolled out across all productions, then some of the existing anomalies may well be tackled albeit they may be replaced by other concerns.

Turning to the experimental pricing productions, I think we now have pricing information for three operas (Rigoletto, Elektra and Boheme) and two ballets (Don Q and Manon):

Production	Top Price	Balcony Central Block Restricted (eg A33)	Stalls Circle Sides Bench Seats (eg B26)	Amphitheatre Sides (Row E)	Slips (max)	Standing (max)
Opera
Rigoletto	£220	£146	£78	£97 £78 £49	£49	£24
		66%	35%	44% to 22%	22%	11%
Elektra	£200	£108	£79 £64	£79 £64 £49	£49	£24
		54%	40% to 32%	40% to 25%	25%	12%
Boheme	£245	£132	£97 £78	£97 £78 £49	£49	£25
		54%	40% to 32%	40% to 20%	20%	10%
Ballet
Don Quixote	£150	£104	£83	£83 £67 £52	£14	£14
		69%	55%	55% to 35%	9%	9%
Manon	£140	£99	£79 £63	£79 £63 £49	£14	£14
		71%	56% 45%	56% to 35%	10%	10%

Illustrative £175 top price ballet	£175	£121	£97, £78	£97 £78 £61	£16	£16
		69%	55%	55% to 35%	9%	9%

There are some interesting changes between Autumn and Winter and the changes were made before Autumn tickers were generally on sale and they can’t reflect final audience reaction to prices as the new Season is still some weeks away:

a) Elektra’s and Boheme’s Balcony restricted view seats are significantly reduced compared to Rigoletto (54% of top price compared to 66%).

b) There are two price categories for Stalls Circle bench seats for Elektra and Boheme compared to one for Rigoletto.

c) There’s a reduction in the relative cost of the top price Amphitheatre Sides seats - down from 44% to 40%. All three operas share the £49 lowest price for Row E. I wonder if for opera there’s been a decision to ensure that at least some front Amphitheatre Side seats are under £50?

d) All operas share the £49 maximum price for Slips with Standing places £24 (£25 for Boheme).

d) Looking at experimental pricing for ballet, the only change of note for Manon compared to Don Q is the welcome introduction of two price categories for Stalls Circle bench seats, mirroring what’s happened for operas.

e) However, for Manon there has been no reduction in the relative price of Balcony restricted view seats (which Winter operas have enjoyed): indeed there’s a marginal increase, up from 69% to 71%.

f) And the discounts offered to ballet for the vast majority of seats are nowhere near as generous as those offered to opera (by some 15 percentage points of the top price for the production).

g) The only exception is the extraordinary pricing for best Slips seats where opera prices are all £49 (20% to 25% of the top price) and ballet prices are £14 (9% or 10% of the top price). I can’t understand the rationale at all … unless perhaps there were two consultants who were working in isolation?

When I first looked at prices for all Autumn productions, I don’t think it was clear which productions formed part of experimental pricing. The ROH did not set out its rationale (in terms of fairness, accessibility, and financial viability) nor its strategy for achieving it (testing experimental pricing for a limited number of productions). Instead bits and pieces of information have emerged. So in Autumn it seemed perfectly reasonable to look at all productions and make comparisons.

But with the ROH now piloting its experimental pricing, I don’t think it will pay much attention to comparisons with non experimental pricing productions. After all by definition experimental pricing will be a departure from previous practice. And for ballet at least, the one Winter main stage production, Manon, looks to be very much part of the experimental pricing testing.

The ROH may highlight fairness, accessibility, financial viability in general terms but it hasn’t set out its criteria for demonstrating its achievements.

As regards ‘accessibility’, the ROH has had variations of x% of tickets sold at £y or less. But with inflation and cuts in funding, x has been falling and y increasing. Setting x as something which itself is indexed for inflation would help (eg linked to minimum or living wage) and give the ROH at least the possibility of improving accessibility although that won’t address cuts to grant funding.

No doubt financial viability could be measured, including the extent to which experimental pricing increases box office revenue. But there would also be need to consider whether there were any adverse effects flowing from the experimental pricing: for example a reduction in membership income if Friends were to cancel membership or reduce their level of membership; or if legacies were adversely affected.

But I struggle to see how the ROH proposes to demonstrate fairness when it explicitly wishes to reduce the number of price categories and narrow differences between price categories. Those two factors inevitably mean that medium to lower priced tickets would increase at a faster rate than top priced tickets.

And the ROH is explicitly looking at different pricing models for opera and ballet. Over recent years we have seen ballet medium to lower priced tickets increasing at a much faster rate than similar tickets for opera and the result is that ballet tickets are a much higher percentage of the top price than opera. That has meant that for some tickets, the same seat costs more for a ballet than for opera despite top opera prices being significantly more expensive than top ballet prices. I can’t see how such outcomes can be described as ‘fair’.

From what we see to date of experimental pricing, the minimum price for Don Q Amphitheatre Sides Row E seats is a staggering £52 (compared to £32 for Nutcracker, a ‘non experimental pricing’ price). The price for the same seat for the three operas is £49 where top price opera is up to £100 more than the Don Q top price.

Experimental pricing talked about reducing the number of price categories but one of the first changes has been to restore/add an extra price category for Stalls Circle bench seats. The bench seats are therefore priced more reasonably under experimental pricing than the extortionate prices charged for Nutcracker (and last season’s Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella).

I’d add a note of caution about drawing comparisons between Don Q and last Season’s Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.

On 03/08/2023 at 09:45, Bluebird said:

But, when you compare the prices for Beauty and Cinderella to those for Don Q, some top prices have, indeed, fallen:

For Beauty and Cinderella, the top price in the amphitheatre was £112. For Don Q it's £104.

In the side stalls circle, the decrease is even greater:

For Beauty and Cinderella, the bench seats in Stalls Circle row B (16-27 and 86-97) were £112. For Don Q these seats have two prices: £83 and £67

The explanation for the large reduction in price of these stalls circle side seats could be that they have a restricted view. However, if they can lower the price of these seats because of their restricted view, how can they justify the very steep increase in price for the restricted view front side amphitheatre seats?

Top price tickets for Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella were £175 whilst for Don Q the top price is £150. Also Don Q is part of experimental pricing so the Stalls Circle bench seats are more reasonably priced and there are now the two price categories. For illustration at the bottom of my table above I’ve taken the Don Q pricing pattern and shown what prices would be for a £175 top price ballet. The £112 Sleeping Beauty/Cinderella price (top price Amphitheatre and restricted view Balcony) would be £121; Stalls Circle bench seats would be £97 and £78; and the Amphitheatre Sides Row E minimum price would be £61.

We’ll have to see what prices are set for Swan Lake (where the top price may be £175 or higher). Booking opens before the end of November and so there may well be incomplete feedback on Don Q prices and Manon general booking will only have been open for a few weeks, with opening night perhaps a couple of months away.

Whilst it’s too early to draw conclusions, I’d highlight the following:

a) Good to see more reasonably priced Stalls Circle bench seats with two price categories (for both opera and ballet);

b) Extraordinarily generous Slips top prices for ballet (but not for opera) where ballet prices are the same as for Standing places;

c) But extortionate prices for the cheapest front Amphitheatre Sides seats (where it seems opera may well have a £49 cap). I recognise that £49 is massively more expensive than prices for ballets not subject to experimental pricing (eg £32 for Nutcracker) and would support having a much lower cap than £49 for ballets;

d) And critically, what is the justification for opera medium/lower priced tickets receiving such a generous discount? As a percentage of top prices, the vast majority of opera seats are some 15 percentage points lower than ballet seats. How is this ‘fair’ or is there a better proxy measure for fairness than comparing seats as a percentage of the top price for the production?

I’d also say that the ROH does take feedback seriously and has clearly responded to some criticisms made: Don Q Standing prices; the two price categories for Stalls Circle bench seats; and perhaps the reduction in prices for Winter operas compared to Rigoletto. Anyone wishing to give personal feedback to the ROH can of course do so at any point: I’m sure the ROH will be interested in seeing what audience members have to say.

Dawnstar · August 19, 2023

7 minutes ago, JohnS said:

Top price tickets for Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella were £175 whilst for Don Q the top price is £150. Also Don Q is part of experimental pricing so the Stalls Circle bench seats are more reasonably priced and there are now the two price categories. For illustration at the bottom of my table above I’ve taken the Don Q pricing pattern and shown what prices would be for a £175 top price ballet. The £112 Sleeping Beauty/Cinderella price (top price Amphitheatre and restricted view Balcony) would be £121; Stalls Circle bench seats would be £97 and £78; and the Amphitheatre Sides Row E minimum price would be £61.

We’ll have to see what prices are set for Swan Lake (where the top price may be £175 or higher).

If your calculations are correct then I'm glad I saw lots of Swan Lake casts last time around as if the stalls circle bench seats are going to be somewhere around £78 then I won't be able to afford to see many this time!

Cescablue · October 24, 2023

Probably not quite the right place to post this, but can't find anywhere suitable on searching - just FYI, there appear to have been a lot of Nutcracker tickets released today - including for previously sold-out pre-Christmas performances. Just in case anyone is wanting to treat themselves - there is a range of prices (not exactly cheap though....). Should I start a new thread for this? Not sure on protocol.... Many thanks!

alison · October 24, 2023

Looks as though they've decided that there's no more demand for Access seats - most of those places are around the wheelchair etc. spaces.

Dawnstar · October 27, 2023

I think today was the first time I've got stuck in a queue looking at that ubiquitous sofa for Friday rush booking.

alison · October 27, 2023

I didn't, but even so I still didn't manage to get a standing ticket for next Friday, so I'm still searching. Just kept getting messages that there was a problem with my tickets

ROH Autumn 23 booking

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