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Post by tonyloco on Feb 6, 2019 13:49:04 GMT
I may have mentioned this subject before but in digging out my historical theatre programmes relating to Afternoon Tea, I came across some photos of the Australian tradition of throwing streamers onto the stage at the last night of a popular production. The pictures show Margot Fonteyn being honoured with streamers at the end of her brief season in Sydney back in the 1950s and Joan Sutherland being treated to a similar farewell at her final performance in opera in Sydney in 1990. It is an emotional and uplifting experience, both for the performers on stage and for the audience, to be present on one of these occasions and I regret that there is no similar tradition in British theatre on 'special' last nights as far as I know. Flowers are sometimes thrown onto the stage for favourite stars of opera and ballet, usually on opening nights, but I believe there is nothing as spectacular as an Australian 'streamer' farewell. Perhaps Theatre Board members might like to consider organising one at some appropriate occasion in the future, but they will have to do it without my participation as I am now too old for that sort of activity! Of course it might run foul of Health and Safety regulations as a fire risk, but there are a number of shows where bits of paper are showered onto the audience – Bat Out of Hell for one – so why not some streamers?  |
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Post by TallPaul on Feb 6, 2019 18:16:22 GMT
If only you'd brought this subject up a month ago, Tony. All those Board members sitting at the front of Drury Lane for the last night of 42nd Street.
I, myself, am an excellent tosser...of streamers. 🙂
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Post by Dawnstar on Feb 6, 2019 18:52:54 GMT
Flowers are sometimes thrown onto the stage for favourite stars of opera and ballet, usually on opening nights, but I believe there is nothing as spectacular as an Australian 'streamer' farewell.
I think the ROH's flower showers are fairly spectacular. I saw Fille du Regiment the night of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's 70th birthday & they had a flower shower & also Jim Carson wheeling a large birthday cake on stage for her (this was just after she'd made a guest appearance in Downton Abbey). I don't think they necessarily do flower showers on opening nights though. They're usually done for singers/dancers who are retiring or marking long careers so I would have thought the last performance in a run would be a more likely occasion or, like with Dame Kiri, some sort of anniversary date.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 6, 2019 23:01:51 GMT
Flowers are sometimes thrown onto the stage for favourite stars of opera and ballet, usually on opening nights, but I believe there is nothing as spectacular as an Australian 'streamer' farewell.
I think the ROH's flower showers are fairly spectacular. I saw Fille du Regiment the night of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's 70th birthday & they had a flower shower & also Jim Carson wheeling a large birthday cake on stage for her (this was just after she'd made a guest appearance in Downton Abbey). I don't think they necessarily do flower showers on opening nights though. They're usually done for singers/dancers who are retiring or marking long careers so I would have thought the last performance in a run would be a more likely occasion or, like with Dame Kiri, some sort of anniversary date.
Yes, Dawnstar, you are basically right, but back in the 1960s flower throws at the Royal Opera House used sometimes to be organised on first nights as well. I am fairly sure that the opening night of Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev in February 1965 had a spectacular flower throw, as well as some huge bouquets presented to Dame Margot on stage during the curtain calls. I am also fairly sure that there was a massive flower throw (mainly daffodils) on the opening night of one of Joan Sutherland's new productions at the ROH in the 1960s, perhaps it was La sonnambula or I puritani, and I definitely remember Richard Bonynge walking onto the stage and slipping on the daffodils as 2,200 people all said 'Whoops!' together, which Maestro Bonynge did not enjoy! |
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Post by hal9000 on Feb 7, 2019 12:09:36 GMT
Last year I attended a Cher concert in Australia and during TURN BACK TIME people threw sailor hats onstage  |
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Post by Dawnstar on Feb 7, 2019 19:37:23 GMT
Yes, Dawnstar, you are basically right, but back in the 1960s flower throws at the Royal Opera House used sometimes to be organised on first nights as well. I am fairly sure that the opening night of Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev in February 1965 had a spectacular flower throw, as well as some huge bouquets presented to Dame Margot on stage during the curtain calls. I am also fairly sure that there was a massive flower throw (mainly daffodils) on the opening night of one of Joan Sutherland's new productions at the ROH in the 1960s, perhaps it was La sonnambula or I puritani, and I definitely remember Richard Bonynge walking onto the stage and slipping on the daffodils as 2,200 people all said 'Whoops!' together, which Maestro Bonynge did not enjoy!
Unfortunately the 1960s were rather before my time so I never saw Fonteyn or Sutherland live, although thanks to conductors tending to go on forever I have seen Bonynge.
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Post by tmesis on Feb 7, 2019 21:54:07 GMT
Some recollections on 'flower throwing' at The Garden. I first went there in 1977 and have been going regularly ever since. In the 70s and 80s I probably saw Sutherland around eight times in total. I was never a particular fan but, whenever she was singing, it was always the time when there was the greatest sense of occasion, with a quite electric atmosphere - even when she wasn't singing very well. Amongst those eight performances I suppose some would be first nights and some last nights but the majority must have been the middle of a run. As I remember it ALL had massive 'flower showers.' As tonyloco says mainly daffodils and so many that the stage was covered. It seemed a very organised, pre-meditated business with boxes of them piled up, and lobbed from, the lower amphitheatre slips. No one else commanded this amount of floral adulation. Other singers I have seen a few flowers thrown for were Domingo, Carreras, Pavarotti, Alfredo Kraus, Nicolai Gedda, Monserrat Caballe but never for Te Kanawa. At the ballet I've seen it for Dowell/Sibley, Eagling/Park and Carlos Acosta. |
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 9, 2019 13:01:44 GMT
Some recollections on 'flower throwing' at The Garden. I first went there in 1977 and have been going regularly ever since. In the 70s and 80s I probably saw Sutherland around eight times in total. I was never a particular fan but, whenever she was singing, it was always the time when there was the greatest sense of occasion, with a quite electric atmosphere - even when she wasn't singing very well. Amongst those eight performances I suppose some would be first nights and some last nights but the majority must have been the middle of a run. As I remember it ALL had massive 'flower showers.' As tonyloco says mainly daffodils and so many that the stage was covered. It seemed a very organised, pre-meditated business with boxes of them piled up, and lobbed from, the lower amphitheatre slips. No one else commanded this amount of floral adulation. Other singers I have seen a few flowers thrown for were Domingo, Carreras, Pavarotti, Alfredo Kraus, Nicolai Gedda, Monserrat Caballe but never for Te Kanawa. At the ballet I've seen it for Dowell/Sibley, Eagling/Park and Carlos Acosta.
For the ballet, these were generally at first performances because then, as now, a run of subsequent performances would involve numerous cast changes and then the ballet would be revived later, but, as you say, it was not uncommon for all Sutherland opera performances to see flower throws because La Stupenda was held in such high esteem by the regulars who went to the trouble of organising them. Curiously, although I was present at the first night of the Callas Tosca in 21 January 1964, I don't think there was a major flower throw from the Amphitheatre Slips (I could be wrong) but I think some flowers were thrown onto the stage from people in the Stalls.
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Post by ctas on Feb 9, 2019 15:18:20 GMT
I’ve been present for two full flower throws at the ROH: the first night of the new Swan Lake last year, and a couple of years ago for Carlos Acosta’s final full-length ballet appearance. It’s an incredible sight!
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Post by Dawnstar on Feb 9, 2019 19:36:07 GMT
Yes, tmesis, I can confirm that the flower showers at Covent Garden did indeed take quite a bit of organising because for a couple of years I shared a flat with a balletomane who was obsessed with Sibley and Dowell and he would arrange flower throws for them whenever it seemed appropriate. He would firstly make sure that the end seats in the Amphitheatre Lower Slips were purchased for the selected date (A1 and A113) for his accomplices to occupy, although he himself always sat in A 56 to enjoy the performance and observe the throwing. He would buy the flowers at a market in Leather Lane, preferably daffodils if available which were both cheap and good to throw, and they would be stored in our flat until he took them to meet his pals in Floral Street before the performance. The throwers would wear large trench coats to conceal the bunches of flowers to get them inside the auditorium and then the resulting rain of flowers would take place during the curtain calls. So the flower showers were being done by audience members, more or less illicitly? That's interesting because when I saw it done for Te Kanawa I got the impression that it was something the ROH had organised themselves, as it looked like it was staff members standing in the slips doing the throwing. Also there's a video on the ROH's Youtube channel of Nunez getting a flower shower last year for her 20th anniversary & if they were filming it from the stage then surely they must have organised it too. Presumably it's been regularised over the years. |
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Post by ctas on Feb 9, 2019 21:23:01 GMT
The ROH doesn’t like impromptu flower throws (messy, could cause damage to instruments) but the ones that do happen are permitted at “occasion” performances and with permission agreed before the performance. So they’ll know and sometimes take part if there’s not enough, I believe.
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Post by tmesis on Feb 9, 2019 22:01:00 GMT
You certainly couldn't smuggle in a box of daffs now (or anything else) with the heightened security, although its only just been tightened up again with routine bag searches. There was a distinct lack when then the newly refurbished bits were opened up in September last year, with not only no bag searches, but on around six occasions, no one at all checked my ticket!
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 10, 2019 2:15:10 GMT
Thanks tmesis, Dawnstar and ctas for those updates on flower throws being organised by the ROH, or at least permitted and assisted! My anecdotes relate basically to the 1960s when there was effectively no security like bag checks and it was the 'regulars' who organised the flower throws.
In fact, talking about the lack of security, in the days when the old Balcony was separate to the Amphitheatre, there was a large standing room area behind the seating and one could slip half-a-crown to the attendant on the door and go and stand for the performance. This trick was revealed to me by an older employee at EMI who used to do it frequently when he was working as a steward on the Cunard Line.
I can also remember one occasion when my friend and I were at a concert at the Festival Hall which finished before 10 pm and he said: "Leyler Gencer is appearing for the first time tonight in Don Carlo at the opera house. Let's go and hear her sing 'Tu che le vanita', so we hurried across Waterloo Bridge to the Opera House and when we got to the entrance to the Balcony in Floral Street there was nobody at all on the door so we just went up the stairs and stood for the last act of the Don Carlo. We had tickets in the Amphitheatre for a later Gencer performance but it was fun to have a preview of her performance in the last act! The old Balcony can be seen in the opening section of the film The Red Shoes.
Just imagine being able to walk into a performance at Covent Garden these days in that way!
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Post by ctas on Feb 10, 2019 7:32:33 GMT
What a fun story! Thank you for sharing.
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Post by tonyloco on Feb 10, 2019 16:52:54 GMT
You certainly couldn't smuggle in a box of daffs now (or anything else) with the heightened security, although its only just been tightened up again with routine bag searches. There was a distinct lack when then the newly refurbished bits were opened up in September last year, with not only no bag searches, but on around six occasions, no one at all checked my ticket!
Nobody gave a toss back in the 1960s as to who was standing at the back of the old Gallery or Balcony or whatever it was called. My friend took me up there to see Fonteyn dance The Sleeping Beauty more than once because he maintained that she was the greatest Aurora we would ever see (and he was right) and we should take the opportunity of watching her do it as often as possible in addition to the performances for which we had seats in the Amphitheatre. This was just before the arrival of Nureyev and it was looking as if she would retire at any moment, having turned 40 in 1959. And such was the magic of Fonteyn that even in the furthest reaches of the back of the house, her wonderful performance still reached us in all its magnificence. But I ramble on again...as usual! |
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Post by Tibidabo on Feb 10, 2019 17:06:20 GMT
But I ramble on again...as usual! And may you never, ever, ever stop. You are an inspiring education to us all.😘 |
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Post by tmesis on Feb 10, 2019 17:14:33 GMT
Not for the first time tonyloco you've made me very envious that I never got to see Fonteyn (or Nureyev) dance in anything. Since I started going to The Garden in 1977 it would have been technically possible but to begin with I was only interested in the opera. Then, a few years in, I thought I'd try Swan Lake and I was completely entranced. |
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Post by Dawnstar on Feb 10, 2019 18:44:21 GMT
Not for the first time tonyloco you've made me very envious that I never got to see Fonteyn (or Nureyev) dance in anything. Since I started going to The Garden in 1977 it would have been technically possible but to begin with I was only interested in the opera. Then, a few years in, I thought I'd try Swan Lake and I was completely entranced. I only started seeing the Royal Ballet this season, after 14 years of ROH operagoing, & am kicking myself for having missed the careers of a number of dancers, though not Fonteyn & Nureyev as I was born too late for them. Given how much of my money the ROH has had in the last few months I am highly envious of tonyloco's tales of walking in for free! |
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