Bring your own air-cooler to the BBC Proms
NewsFrom the Daily Telegraph:
Proms concert-goers can keep cool with electric fans during summer shows providing they do not get fellow audience members hot under the collar.Handheld, battery-powered fans will be allowed inside the Royal Albert Hall as the 2022 BBC Proms get under way amid a red-warning heatwave in London, organisers said.But the potentially noisy devices will be scrutinised by staff. Spectators will be asked to fan themselves with something else if the whirring machines begin to annoy those seated nearby….
Phew!
This is such nonsense.
The air conditioning in the RAH works perfectly, silently well.
No need for visual or aural distractions from fans of any sort.
When you sit upstairs it is like an oven.
Having just attended proms1&2, i was surprose by several icy blasts at certain points in the gallery. I detest airconditioning, but keeping well clear of the draught points, i thunk it worked well- and silently!
Where’s your sense of humour?
Now is not the time to defend Russia of course, but at least all of their major performing venues have air conditioning.
I did wonder last night whilst watching the tv prom. how hot it was in the hall. The stewards usually leave the doors wide open but up top must get awful. 6,000 people rammed together, phew as you say.
And a hotbed for the brand new BBC Omiprom covid variant.
I remember how hot it was for the Barenboim Ring proms – this will be even worse and the smell of boiling Urine !
What about the musicians having to wear
The white bow tie in the heat.
You don’t have to go! Going to the Proms will improve the shattered mental health many are suffering. Probably the people with Covid presently have never been to a Prom in their lives, yet it is rife anyway in all parts of the UK. Life is running out for many of us and we can’t be locked away for any more years
It was not very hot last night as it was very poorly attended, and thevair conditiining works lower down. I was due to sit up in the back of the Upper Circle, but we all got upgraded to the stalls. Even then the stalls were far from full. If I lived in Londfon and it was on the telly, then with the heat and the lack of Undergroud trains running as a result, might have had second thoughts. See what happens tonight as I’m going to the two, and it is already far hotter out there than yesterday at 11am. Back to the cooler north tomorrow.
The constant fluttering of a non-battery powered fan is also distracting and annoying. As for those who flap their programmes about…
Yes, flapping programmes and American coughing brigade! But generally the British along with German audiences go to listen and watch, not distract others. There wasnt a meak out of last night’s Prom concert apart from heartfelt applause for our fine BBC Phiharmonic Orchestra who are Manchester-based.
A musty, fusty behemoth at the best of times, in 104F, just forget it.
I had seen many Met opera productions on screen and each time was conscious of a sort of background white noise on the sound tracks. I even wrote to Gaumont to complain about it. And then on one occasion, I was actually present at the Met for a production of Norma and heard the same noise. I presume it was coming from the air conditioning system…
The Mostly Mozart Festival, which took place every August, used to turn off the air conditioning entirely just before downbeat to avoid the white noise effect of which you complain. The air in Avery Fisher Hall would quickly grow hot and stagnant, making it difficult to focus on anything other than one’s own physical discomfort. I’d gladly have some easily ignored white noise in order to soak in the music instead of my own sweat.
I was informed that the Naples opera house
Cannot have air conditioning because it
Will damage the old hall.
Were there never hot days “back in the day”? How did we ever survive?
Six weeks of 1976 all over England, whatever about the rest of the UK.
In the old days the press was not making people counscious of global waming all the time. By the way, there is hot climate and there is hot weather, and they are not the same.
RAS. Royal Albert Sauna. Always has been.
Good, just another way to annoy music loving spectators. As if the tower with the TV cameraman just in front of me, the ancient sea creature with TV camera on the right and the changing disco lights are not enough. Aparently, music is the last thing that matters to the BBC. Just to remind you, there is AC In the Albert Hall.
Yes there’s a steady drone of air conditioning in the gallery, competing with any music
The hottest Prom I ever remember was Kissin’s afternoon recital in 1997
Air conditioning is not good for a singer.