Radio City Music Hall

Renewing link.

In a sense everybody may be right, since the seat count at the Hall frequently changes. When I first started learning about the Hall when I was in Illinois, it was listed as having 6,200 seats. Fred Kellers, who was a Vice President of House Operations told me that Roxy wanted to claim that the Hall had more seats than his former venue theRoxy. Thus, they counted even the toilets as “seats” along with the furniture in the lobby.

While that story may be fanciful, the number of seats did change. Even before the concert and telecast age, if the pasarelle (Sp?), or ramp along thefront of the orchestra pit was in for the Rockettes to move out into the audience for their finale, one or two rows of seats at the front of the orchestra were lost, thus reducing the number.

As oldjoe points out above, seating on the orchestra pit itself added seats for some concerts (they’re regarded as “VIP” seats, although I’ve always thought the sightlines were not particularly good unless the performer was working far downstage.)

The move of the house sound board from the Projection level to the 2nd Mezz. lost some seats, and the number constantly changes to accomdate various pieces of equipment as well as the demands of the various telecasts which originate there. Thus all of the above seating estimates may be correct at any given point in time.

There is no difference Den. Sorry to have upset you.

The NFL Draft will be held at this venue next week.

did you guys walk around and count? whats the difference? shea stadium had 55,400 now it has zero!! lets be happy yhe music hall is still with us!!!

one day i got an emergency organ technician to the stageannouncement on the house system, the organist was trying to change a burned out bulb&the whole top came off &he was holing it from dropping into the audience,i won’t say who it was but it seemed comical how blown out he was, well, i changed the bulb returned the top&went back to our office/shop to wait for the nativity to start, always a fun part for problems on the organ

Actually, at one point the ruse was carried even further with a dummy placed at one console.

Though I’ve never seen a Christmas show, I was able to catch an Easter show one time. I was pretty young, but I do remember thoroughly enjoying it! (sigh) I still regret not being able to catch a movie and stage show at Radio City when I show up as an NYC tourist.

I must disagree with the statement that the Easter Show wasn’t as memorable as the Christmas Show. The “Glory of Easter” prelude always blew me away, and I was actually kind of disappointed when I first saw the “Nativity” Prelude as originally done. The “Glory” is all about choreography, and you don’t realize where it’s heading until the final chords of music when the “novices” kneel and form a living cross on the steps to the altar as the contour comes in.

That cross was lit by two high intensity spots in th projection booth, the brightest of all the spots in the theatre. The only lamps run by projectionists rather than stage hands, they could project patterns as well as having cutters that could mask the image to strips, with one lamp doing the horizontal bar of the cross and the other doing the vertical. As the contour just ticked the tip of the vertical strip lighting the cross the lamps faded.

The incident Vito is referring to came about because the previous cue for the lamps was a blue strip across the front of the stage as the Rockettes came down from their positions on the Choral Stairs. When that cue was finished the blue gels in the lamps were pulled out and the lamps were put into “spot focus” mode which reduced the spread of the lamps and produced a very intense white light for the cross. As the girls kneeled, the stage manager would buzz the booth for the lamps to come on together.

At one performance, the two operators must have gotten into a conversation (or an argument) and forgot to pull the blue gels, so when the cue came, the light on the cross wasn’t the brilliant white it was suppoosed to be. After the show an angry stage manager called the booth to chew out the crew. “What was that?” he asked angrily. The projectionist on the phone was unfazed. “What? Haven’t you ever heard of Blue Cross?!”

It’s not as memorable a show as the Christmas show. I’ve seen it dozens of time and don’t remember a thing about it.

I do….why don’t they do it anymore much like the xmas special? It doesn’t get promoted a lot like the xmas shows.

As far as I know, when I left the Hall the asbestos curtain was still in use (although it isn’t publicized as being asbestos.) It is in two sections because it is over 70' in height (the proscenium is an arch with a 60' radius which starts 10' off the deck.) The two sections are easier to handle in terms of sheer weight as well as not requiring over 140' plus in fly space as a single piece would require. As I think has been mentioned above, the curtain in free fall is stopped by weights hitting water in pnuematic tubes. No one, or thing, is allowed to stand on the curtain line, since that would block it’s fall. As of the time I left, the curtain was still tested in a free fall drop on a regular basis — a truly impressive sight (and sound).