Margot Fonteyn – Ballerina Assoluta

Thank you for sharing! My mother saw Fonteyn in the 60’s I believe and the opera house programme is one of her prized possessions!

Leading on from this, what do people think of the planned Fonteyn celebrations? The ROH are doing a performance that so far includes the Firebird but I’m not sure what else. Predictions, anyone?

A few days ago, I wrote up a long post describing the way bookings at the Royal Opera House worked for ballet and opera when I first arrived in London in 1960 but decided it was too boring to post so I deleted it and now I find that you are actually asking about that very subject.

Back in 1960, all tickets for every performance at the ROH was sold only to personal callers at the box office.  The tickets for opera and ballet went on sale separately covering periods of about two months and those who wanted the best seats for the most popular performances went to the ROH on the first day of the new booking period.  Generally a queue would form at the three separate box office windows (Gallery & Upper Slips, Amphitheatre and Lower Slips and 'Downstairs'.  At something like 8.30 am 'queue tickets' were handed out to every person queuing at that time with a printed time to return to the box office later in the day after it opened at 10 am and anybody who arrived between 8.30 am and 10 am would likewise be given a queue ticket to return at a designated time.  For major events people would start queueing several days in advance and there were strict rules as to how the queues worked.  There was a list for each of the three queues and you signed on when you arrived. The lists were held by 'regulars' who were willing to hang around the vicinity of the box offices until relieved by other list holders.  Once you had signed on you were supposed to remain somewhere in the Covent Garden area but most serious queuers went to performances at the ROH or elsewhere in the West End.  You could even go home briefly if necessary but it was absolutely necessary to spend the night near the Opera House sleeping in the street although a few lucky people actually had cars in which they spent the night.  I had a kit consisting of a lilo and a sleeping bag and extra warm clothing and on a couple of occasions I actually bagged one of the doorways in Floral Street. For morning ablutions etc the most popular toilets were those in the Covent Garden Plaza at the back of the Actors' Church.  The longest queue I ever did was for the first complete Solti Ring when I slept out three nights (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) for tickets going on sale on Monday morning at 10 am.  But despite the whole queuing performance, it was generally good enough to go to the box office on the first day of booking to get reasonable seats for everything.  An early bus or tube to arrive before 8.30 am in order to get a queue tickets was best but otherwise one could just go to the box office much later in the day after the queue tickets had all been used and even for the next day or so after booking opened there would still be reasonable seats available for most things.

So what happened to upset this system?  Well, for the ballet it was the arrival of Nureyev and for the opera it was the Callas Tosca in 1964. People who lived outside London started to make a fuss that they wanted to see Nureyev dance and could not get to the box office weeks before the performance they wanted to attend, and wives of Members of Parliament became incensed that they could not get tickets to see Callas after they read the reviews!  The result was that the Opera House had to set up a system of postal booking which meant that in theory everybody had an equal chance of getting the tickets they wanted for each new booking period but of course it was very much a lottery. Then they invented the Friends, and then on-line booking became the norm for all theatrical performances and we all know the joys of that, including electronic queuing, which of course is more comfortable sitting at home with a computer than sleeping in Floral Street but perhaps less of an adventure!

But going back to your original question, tmesis, the answer is that it was not all that hard in 1960 to get to see Fonteyn or Christoff or Gobbi or Vickers or Freni or Alva or de los Angeles or Crespin or Nilsson and I had no trouble just a few days before the performance in booking a front row seat in the Stalls Circle to hear Jussi Björling and Rosanna Carteri sing La Bohème on 18 March 1960….just imagine that!

PS One of the benefits of queueing at the ROH back in the 1960s was that one got to know the hard-core regulars of both ballet and opera – there's nothing better for getting to know people with similar interests than sleeping with them in Floral Street for a night or two!

I guess there were probably at least 20 or so such regulars for both the opera and the ballet that I knew either by name or at least by sight and some of them had rather un-PC nicknames like 'The Seahorse' or 'The Fat Boy' or 'The Queen of the Night' or 'Mad Heather'. But we were all very friendly and supportive and there was also a practice among the regulars of selling or buying extra tickets from each other. For each new group of performances, including cast changes, the regulars would buy several tickets spread across the schedule.  Then for those things that we didn't like much we would sell our extra tickets to other regulars or we could also buy extra tickets, as I did when Sutherland sang I puritani and I just had to get to every performance!  This trading tickets among the regulars could take place at any time and of course the regulars would gather during the intervals to discuss the performances.  I am talking now mainly about the Amphitheatre regulars, although after the old Gallery got incorporated into the Amphitheatre then it became just one group.  We never knew any of the posh people who were regulars 'downstairs' although no doubt they also had a clique!

The other practice that was well established, but which the ROH put a stop to in more recent times although I don't know whether it has survived in any form, was arriving in Floral Street an hour or so before a performance and waving a ticket if one was selling or waving a pound note if one was buying!  On arrival, one would firstly look out for any regulars to see if they were buying or selling and then face the general public if necessary. Over several years I don't think I ever failed either to buy or sell for any performance, although if Amphitheatre tickets were not forthcoming then I would sometimes splurge out on a seat in the Balcony Stalls or Stalls Circle or even the main Stalls, which sellers would sometimes offer at a discount! 

As readers can imagine, in those days attending the ROH for both opera and ballet did become a major part of one's life and, as I said earlier in this thread, for me the climax of it all was the Macmillan Romeo and Juliet for which I attended nine out of the first twelve performances.  The three that I missed were the Lynn Seymour ones because despite the fact that Seymour was Macmillan's muse and he created the role of Juliet for her, she was by far the least satisfactory of the first group of Juliets, which I think were Fonteyn (4 performances), Seymour (4 performances), Merle Park (2 performances) and Antoinette Sibley (2 performances).