Night at the Opera-backstage

Behind the scenes: you can see a woman on the left of the frame -
she's standing pretty close to centre stage

Behind the orchestra pit below the stage

This week a little something different: not so much about amazing photography and well-planned shots and cool techniques as much as unique experience and a peek into something you just might not see every day.

I recently played with an opera company of all things on a short tour of their Rossini's "Barber of Seville" production. As someone who's studied guitar, it's not something I do every day since realistically...there's not a lot of guitar in the opera repertoire (and I must admit that I'm doing more photography these days than music anyway).

Hammerson Hall from the orchestra pit

Some of the halls were quite nice and since I don't play throughout the entire opera, I thought it might be an interesting opportunity to capture a different side of the event that many will likely never see.

I love the idea of being able to run around behind the orchestra pit while such a formal event is going on. 1300 people are sitting there behaving themselves quietly in their chairs and I'm completely alone to walk around directly behind the music and under the singers (under the action) in a completely different environment.

Looking into the orchestra pit (and into the hall): they built add-ons
to the stage so that it wrapped around the front of the pit so that it was
directly in front of the audience. If you above that timpani, you can see
almost half of "Figaro"...or was that The Count...¿?