Opera house

“ For luxury and lavish expenditure as regards the adornment of the person, nothing is comparable to the interior of the Opera-house on a crowded night; the dazzled eye perceives at first but a vast amphitheatre sparkling with gold, jewels, silk and lace, so disposed as to impart fresh attractions to the ivory shoulders and ebon locks they deck, lending all the charms of art to the riches of nature. ”

“ It is a masterpiece of its kind, this opera house, the work of that Charles Garnier who built the Paris opera, and whose style, if too gay and florid for a temple dedicated to the classics, is admirably suited to the frivolous atmosphere of Monte Carlo. Outside it is a medley of columns, mosaics, lyres, masks and minarets; inside, of gilding, garlands, friezes and frescoes. Vigorous young women support the domed ceiling, naked youths perch precariously on the cornices; one is confused and intimidated by the riot of colour and decoration. ”

“ Groups of the singers regularly engaged in the opera house stand in the wings, and you feel a nameless hostility emanating from all of them, especially from the one whom you are going to try to supplant. The theatre is like a cavern, and the acoustic is of course totally unknown to you. Two or three pale spots down in the orchestra chairs indicate the whereabouts of the director and perhaps the stage manager and first Kapellmeister who have come to hear you. The overhead "rehearsal lights" are very unbecoming and you are quite conscious of it. ”

“ The fickleness of the public taste, the popular craving for sensation, the egotism and rapacity of the artists, the lack of high purpose in the promoters, the domination of fashion instead of love for art, the lack of real artistic culture—all these things have stood from the beginning, as they still stand, in the way of a permanent foundation of opera in New York. The boxes of the Metropolitan Opera House have a high market value to-day, but they are a coveted asset only because they are visible symbols of social distinction. ”

“ The Opera House was a symbol to me—it made my secret ambition to be an actress seem more than a dream—and I had had thrilling afternoons there enjoying matinees of the many road companies as well as at our own McCourt Hall, which had been the theatrical center before the Opera House was built. ”

“ We have taken a suite of rooms in the Clarendon Hotel, so as to be near the opera-house, where I go to practise with the orchestra. You cannot imagine how intense the whole thing is.
To feel that I can hold a great audience, like the one that greeted me the first night, in my hand, and to know that I can make them laugh or cry whenever I please—to see the mass of upturned faces—is an inspiring sensation. The applause bewildered me at first, and I was fearfully excited; but one gets used to all things in the end. ”

“ The new Opera House, commenced under the Empire and finished under the Republic, is the most complete building of the kind in the world and in many respects the most beautiful. No European capital possesses an opera house so comprehensive in plan and execution, and none can boast an edifice equally vast and splendid. ”

“ In the opera house all is bustle and commotion. The officials are selling tickets, receiving tickets, and directing to their places bevies of ladies and gentlemen bewildered in a maze of passages. The audience is impatiently preparing itself for a delightful evening's entertainment. The dandies, who are so unfortunate as not to have accompanied ladies have already brought themselves up to the attack, and have levelled their opera-glasses on all the points where they know well-established objects of admiration are likely to be found. ”

“ Presently there will be gaps in the circle of musicians who always settle about the focal point of an opera house, and you will hear no more the manifold outpourings of their several souls, throats and fiddles. ”

“ This in itself is not much to boast of, for the entertainment of the ballet is independent of language to a still greater extent; and La Gitana or Esmeralda can be as well understood by an Englishman at the Opera House of Berlin or of Moscow as at Her Majesty's Theatre in London; while perhaps the most universally intelligible drama ever performed is that of Punch, even when the brief dialogue which adorns its pantomime is inaudible.
Opera is music in a dramatic form; and people go to the theatre and listen to it as if it were so much prose. ”

“ In fact, at the Opera our Queen is one of the least conspicuously dressed among the many duchesses and millionairesses who don tiaras and gorgeous gowns. No Opera-house in the world contains so many beautiful women and jewels as may nightly be seen in London. ”

“ The house itself is faultlessly beautiful and comfortable. This last feature is worth making a note of, for the Grand Opera House in Paris is stifling, the most unbreathable atmosphere to which I was ever subjected.
The mise-en-scene here and all over Europe leaves nothing to ask for. At home by half-past ten; let in by a concierge, who provided us with a small wax taper to light ourselves up to our apartments. There the post-opera collation was awaiting. Don’t you wish you had been one at it? Would not that have been provocation to immense brilliancy? ”

“ The Opera-house referred to in the extract above quoted, is the Academie Nationals de Musique, or French Opera-house, also sometimes called the new Opera-house. It is generally admitted to be the finest Opera-house in the world. The space covered by this magnificent building is 140 metres by 122, (about 470 feet by 410) , or nearly four and a half acres. It has seats for 2,520 spectators. The staircases, walls and ceiling are of the finest marble. The "house" for the spectators or audience is built entirely of stone and iron, rich in decorations and thick with gold. ”

“ After the tragedy, at a meeting in the Metropolitan Opera House called together by horrified men and women of the city, this young capmaker stood at the edge of the great opera-house stage and in a voice hardly raised, though it reached every person in that vast audience, arraigned society for regarding human life so cheaply. ”

“ Writers on fire with the romance of this continental city love to speak of the splendors of the French Opera House, the first place in the country where grand opera was heard, and tell of the tiers of beautiful women with their jewels and airs and graces. ”

“ The season of operas of a lighter character than those given at the Metropolitan Opera House which was undertaken at the New Theater, a beautiful playhouse built for high purposes by a body of gentlemen most of whom were interested in the larger institution, proved to be a disastrous failure for reasons which are not to be discussed here, but which were not wholly disconnected with the causes which, a year later, led to the abandonment of the New Theater to the same uses to which the other playhouses of the city are put. ”

“ In the United States the Opera has always lived the life of an exotic. Finding congenial soil in some of the larger and wealthier cities, it has there flourished for a while, then suddenly drooped and withered. Large and elegant theatres, to which have been applied the dignified title of Academy of Music or Opera House, have been built, it having been, in some cases, the primary purpose of the owners to devote the establishment solely to representations of the lyric drama. ”

“ It was not alone the official title of the French institution, popularly spoken of as the Grand Opéra, which was in the minds of the promoters of the New York enterprise—the new opera house was to be a veritable academy of music, an educational institution. Not only was fashionable society to have a place in which to display and disport itself, but popular taste and popular knowledge were to be cultivated. ”

“ About all is the atmosphere of history, tradition, and the aura of a genuinely free people. The Royal Opera House itself has a particular fascination for me. So far as I am concerned, there is not the slightest incongruity in the fact that its façade looks out on a police station and police court and that it is almost otherwise surrounded by a garden market. ”

“ He trusted her to make the best of it.
"Why didn't you ask me to come and see your rooms after we'd had lunch at Wrigglesworth's?" she said presently and, expecting simplicity, counting upon understanding, even he was surprised.
"Ask you there? To those rooms? Over the little greengrocer's shop? Up those uncarpeted wooden stairs?"
And then they found themselves under the portico of the Opera House; in another moment in the crush of people in the vestibule; then making their way round the cheaply-papered boxes along the ugly little passages to the stage-box on the third tier. ”

“ It is a peculiarity of her Majesty’s Theatre that whether the “house” be a good one or a bad one, there are always, before the termination of the first act of the opera, some occupants of the pit who are compelled to content themselves with standing-room.
Opinions are divided as to the place in the enceinte of the magnificent theatre where the greatest enjoyment of the performance can be obtained. To some, a box on the grand tier—vast, roomy, with space for six to sit abreast—is considered the superlative of operatic felicity. ”

“ To which Oliver responded, “People don’t come to the Opera to listen to the music.”
This sounded like a joke, but it was not. To Society the Opera was a great state function, an exhibition of far more exclusiveness and magnificence than the Horse Show; and Society certainly had the right to say, for it owned the opera-house and ran it. The real music-lovers who came, either stood up in the back, or sat in the fifth gallery, close to the ceiling, where the air was foul and hot. ”

“ Anyone, by paying the nominal entrance fee, can enter the opera house—or any theatre—on the chance of finding acquaintances in the boxes, and so spend an hour or two going from one group to another. This gives the house the look of a vast reception, which it is, far more than a place where people come to hear good music. ”

“ On our last evening we attended the Royal Opera, occupying a box quite to ourselves, where we heard good singing and well-rendered music by the Royal Band, beheld a fashionably-dressed and intelligent-looking audience, and were stared at by old King Oscar who sat rigid in his box, and glared at us with a mighty black opera-glass until he had studied each feature of the stranger guests, and by his persistence thereby directed upon us the curiosity of every other pair of opera glasses in the house. ”

“ No person of good taste ever goes to a theatre to look at the fronts of the boxes. Comfortable and roomy seats, perfect cleanliness, decent and fitting curtains and other furniture, of good stuff, but neither costly nor tawdry, and convenient, but not dazzling, light, are the proper requirements in the furnishing of an opera-house. ”

“ A man opens a little restaurant scarcely big enough to accommodate a dozen persons, and everything in it of the plainest and commonest kind, and he dubs it the "Palace" restaurant. "Opera House" is a much abused appellation. Nearly every insignificant, dingy, dismal, inconvenient, and homely theatre and hall throughout the land is dubbed Opera House. ”

“ Modern manners, late dinners, ball-dresses, and the Houses of Parliament, are doubtless serious obstacles to the higher classes of the nobility and gentry frequently attending the theatre; but the example of the Opera-house, which is crowded night after night with the élite of that very class, is sufficient to demonstrate, that all these difficulties can be got over, when people of fashion make up their minds to go to a place of amusement, even where not one in ten understand the language in which the piece is composed. ”

“ The military bands are certainly the best, and these are generally composed of negroes and mulattoes.
The exterior of the Opera-house does not promise anything very beautiful or astonishing, and the stranger is, consequently, much surprised to find, on entering, a large and magnificent house with a deep stage. I should say it could contain more than 2,000 persons. There are four tiers of spacious boxes rising one above the other, the balustrades of which, formed of delicately-wrought iron trellis-work, give the theatre a very tasty appearance. The pit is only for men. ”

“ The evening newspapers had heralded our coming, and we encountered a large crowd outside the opera house, and were met by a barrage of cameramen's flashlights as we entered. Once inside, the crush about us was so great, we had considerable difficulty in reaching Mrs. Van Dyk's box, in the parterre. Although grand opera now was democratized, the "diamond horseshoe" still remained. ”

“ The audience gave no sign that the current of their enchantment had been broken, nor did the reader or the manipulator of the rescuing knight pause for a second in their rôles.
The theaters on the Bowery and in its vicinity advertise Italian opera and occasional revivals of serious drama, but more obvious at present are the lurid advertisements of sensational melodrama. We are plainly under the influence of Broadway and the “movies,” but at the Metropolitan Opera House our neighbors can always be seen in great numbers among the “appreciators” at the top of the house. ”

“ Should the foreigner be fortunate enough to possess a friend with one of these seats who is willing to sacrifice a concert for his benefit, he will hear a marvellous orchestra. For a short time the scene of this unique harmony of sound was shifted from the neighbourhood of the Upper Boulevards to the boards of the Opera-house, and the result was sheer disaster. The orchestra of the Conservatoire is just suited to its own select little hall, but it is too delicate, too perfect, for transposition to a big theatre like the Opera-house of Paris. ”