Sunday, April 01, 2007

The Quiet before the Storm

This is a rare and unusual sight - an empty scenery dock. The Opera Season has just finished - the Semi loaded with all the scenery drove off to Melbourne a few hours ago and the Opera Theatre is strangely empty.


The Ballet Season traditionally starts hard on the heels of the Opera - often bumping in as the OA is bumping out.

Not this time.


The understage area is eerily quiet and empty. You can see the walls! Central passage is not full of skips and trestles, no stacks of masonite for the floor of Rigoletto or large ornate bits of Alcina stacked high.

Don Quixote is coming in tommorrow so this emptiness will be soon filled with sets and lighting rigs - just as it should be - but for now I wander through the dock and make the most of its emptiness.

5 comments:

M-H said...

We went through there last night with the wheelchair - we got t osee Sarsaparilla at last! It was a great experience, booking a park at the stage door and getting a wheelchair.

Coleen said...

enjoy the quiet!

Lynne said...

Thanks for the backstage tour (or should that be under-stage?)

I met someone at a wedding last month who made a documentary in the nether regions of the Opera House - it will be interesting to see if it's ever released!

I hope this is a quiet, uneventful (in the "not wanted" events sense)week for you.

Shirley Goodwin said...

And you get that gold star from me for knowing the name of the ship and the year of the first refrigerated shipment of meat from NZ to the UK!!
Well done!

mehitabel said...

Sometimes this is my favorite time in a theater--the quiet before the maelstrom of activity, the anticipation of good things to come, and the time to savor the peace!