Opera Lovers unite against the ROH and the BBC in unholy alliance

[Prommer]

News just in: in a reversal of policy and what was promised when tickets went on sale, the ROH seems to have decided an hour ago that at this Saturday's performance of La Boheme, the winner of Maestro at the Opera, the BBC's new reality TV programme for celeb baton-faciers, will conduct Act II not at the END of the evening after the end of the performance conducted by Semyon Bychkov, as they were promising people who rang the Box Office only this morning, and indeed tweeted earlier this pm, but now we will have to sit through Act II twice, consecutively, before the actual performance can resume. What a bloody liberty. Trades description act? Suspension of disbelief? Different casts? Trains to catch, anyone? Artistic integrity? I know Tony Hall used to work for the BBC, but he now works for the ROH... doesn't he?

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm no opera buff, but this if true is right out of order.

Extraordinary.

My sympathies.

[Prommer]

@RoyalOperaHouse
@hippoes Apologies,contrary to earlier tweet,Act 2 will be repeated again with the winner conducting before Act 3 continues with Bychkov ^C

[Mary Chambers]

It can't be true!

[Anna]

Putting relevant words into google it says "Part of the final show will be filmed at the Royal Opera House on Saturday 5 May, after that evening's performance of La bohème"

[Prommer]

The situation changes by the hour: the tweet below was issued an hour before they corrected it with the one I have already given above. I was told when I rang this morning that theBBC bit would happen once the 'real' performance has finished.

@RoyalOperaHouse
@hippoes The winner will conduct Act II after the full performance has been completed by Semyon Bychkov. We hope you can stay to watch! ^C

[Prommer]

Quite, Anna. That is exactly how I remembered it was phrased. They have really gone and done this time. Mis-selling to their Friends etc. Following on the booking fiascos, cast changes and a dreary season, dear oh dear. Is there a grown-up in the House?

[Mary Chambers]

Quite hard on the orchestra and the singers all the same. Will it be shown on television as if it's the 'real' performance?

[Prommer]

The cast will be different - Young Artists.

[ahinton]

If anything quie so utterly mad as this has been reported at times to be has really had to be done (and that's surely one of the biggest and iffiest all-time ifs), what a pity that the victim opera wasn't Die Soldaten or Montezuma or Karl V; at least the hapless "conductor" would have then have found him/herself obliged to take him/herself off the podium at a very early stage for fear that his/her total fish-out-of-water incompetence reveal itself by the end of the first page of score...

[ahinton]

The cast will be different - Young Artists.

But the orchestra will presumably be the same, n'est-ce pas?

[DracoM]

I hope the band get paid quadruple time. So bizarre and outrageous a use of precious resources. Hope who ever does conduct it makes a total and embarrassing mess of it and it is recorded for posterity.

[Prommer]

Yes, same band... They will have a very restive audience to deal with, the potential for much booing and disturbance, and for a complete Hor-licks to be made of it all, if you know what I mean. That is, until they stop things and ask for a re-take, though I presume that's not allowed... It's Act II with Cafe Momus etc which will be taking the punishment.

[NickWraight]

In some ways its a very good use of resources! Not that the audience for the "real" preformance will be impressed or, I suspect, the band. There was a strong rumour that whomever won this 'competition' would be stick waving at the Last Night of the Proms this year, which could well still happen, whether at the RAH or Hyde Park.

I do become rather tired with the ROH attempting to become accessible and 'out there' (yuck) by increasing access. For this particular venue access, I would have thought, means attending a performance in the main auditorium rather than experiencing a broadcast event; going to the Linbury spaces; a Tea Dance or the increasingly aromatic restaurants. But then again given (a) the prices and (b) my elitist attitude (whatever that is) perhaps not...!

[DracoM]

I'd just love to be in the brass section of the pit when the TV director asks for yet another take - they're bound to - the banter and chunter in there..........phew!