Having done the Paris tour for Otto’s chapter, I felt I needed to do the tour of the Vienna Opera House to glean some more background information. Things I learned:
- I’m not very good at panos – I keep letting the arrow drift away from the line.
- There is an army of stage-hands. Everyone looks really calm. Had I been on stage, I would have been yelling “Look at the state of this place and we have curtain up in four, YES FOUR, hours.” It was really interesting to watch as they all seemed to be propping up a bit of scenery, chattering away and nothing much happening … and then suddenly into action. And they do this every single day. I don’t have enough stage hands in my novel yet.
- I had also forgotten about the cleaners, the carpet fitters, the re-touchers, of whom I have none in the novel. That will change – I feel a whole host of new characters are about to appear.
- The murals on the ceiling are scenes from different operas.
- Some of the mosaic tiling is … er… rather an odd choice.
As today’s photo album is from the preparations for Ariadne auf Nexus, it would be churlish not to have a track from it on the playlist. This is a notable omission from my collection – I intend to rectify immediately.
Word count for day #1: 1,964; cumulative word count: 47,221
NaNoWriMo Playlist – Track 24
Something from Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss
And an explanation from Glyndebourne’s Cori Ellison
A video from me
