Radio City Music Hall

If you are paying over $100 for the christmas show – that is choice that you are making and no one else is to blame. Besides the discount that old joe mentioned ( you CAN see the show the for $20) . But I bought FULL PRICE in DECEMBER —– $70 FRONT ORCHESTRA seats. Did I Go on a saturday night? NO – that is $100 Did I pay and extra $11.20 tickemaster charge per ticket and delivery charge to my house for another $20. NO – I saved money by going to the box office and buying my tickets. So I save about $200 by seeing the show on a Wednesday and picking up the tickets myself. Was It worth $280 for a family of four – Definately . It cheaper than sitting in prime seats for Broadway, Baseball, Football, Hockey and Basketball , a concert, the met, or carnagie hall or any other live event you can think of? YES. It the most reasonably priced seat in town.

Here’s an architectural mystery at Music Hall,over on the righthand side of the RCMH auditorium,at orchestra level,there is a sound proof booth with a glass window ,it’s under one of the choral stairways. The view from this booth faces the audience so was this for a director,agent,or management person to watch the patrons reactions to performers or films?? The booth is now a continuing corridor that connects to backstage and maybe always did. Was this constructed originally for radio broadcasts, seems unlikely since there were studios for this purpose in the building? The booth does not have a view of the stage, hence it has always left me to wonder what it be for???

I’d also hasten to add that RCMH is hardly just “making a go of it”… With Cablevision’s deep pockets and with a healthy schedule of year-around bookings, I don’t think the Hall will miss my couple of hundred bucks this year, or next.

I know that it was originally planned simply as a, well, as a “music hall”, and that at one time it was planned to have it replace the Metropolitan Opera House, but it was eventually built with a projection booth, so they must have known which side their bread was buttered on all along. And, at 6,000 seats, you can bet it was never meant to appeal to anyone other than the masses. I know that times change. I’m just saying that it is a shame that one can no longer go to RCMH without budgeting for it, and that it no longer operates as a movie palace. It is good that it operates at all.

Grinches, you whine that theatres are closing and nothing is being done to save them, then you have a viable theatre that is making a go of it and has restored the theatre impecably and you whine that it costs too much . you can’t have it both ways. Ed -the theatre almost closed forver in 1979 for not making a profit….so maybe bad management priced the show @ 11.50 The RCCS is still less that broadyway and there is always 50% off promo for shows before thanksgiving $35 for orch seats….$20 for 3rd mezz, so justin you and friends can still go in november and have dirtywater dog on the corner after the show for $100 with all due respect, it should be MORE than a broadway ticket, a 30 piece orchestra, 36 person dance troup, over 20 other singers dancers little people, 2 organists…and thats before you count all the staff behind the scenes…..there is no other show in NY that compares …it is worth $100 prime price in December.

I saw the show a few years ago with the kids. It just burns me to pay so much for a decent ticket. I really didn’t think it was worth the money. Perhaps for a one-time thing, but certainly not to make a tradition of it. If you combined all the admissions I paid (or my folks paid, rather) for the show PLUS a movie back in the ‘70’s, the aggregate would still not be as much as a single 1st Tier ticket to today’s production!

In 1980, after the Hall had ceased its old show & film format, the top ticket to the Christmas Spectacular was just $11.50 – half the top price for a Broadway ducat at the time. I think the top ticket today is just over $100, after fees and surcharges – about what you’d pay for a typical Broadway show – so at leats it’s not as bad as it was a few years ago when the pricing scheme went almost to $200 for the best seats!

Thanks RCDTJ, I must wonder who the “genius” was who made that decision. The great organ in that “Hark the Angels” piece is a big loss to the number. I can still hear it in my head from the good ole days.

hank, no, thst musta have ben some other gumba :)
By the way, does anyone know if either of the organs are beeing used in ther Christmas show?. I have not seen the show live as yet, however on the TV showing they seemed not to be used at all.
I realised it when during the Nativity scene at the end, I remember the organ being a major part of “Hark the Angels Sing”. The great organ sound would reseneate through the hall during that piece, always giving me goose bumps.

hank, the live orchestra was there, you can see the conductor waving his batton in a few shots, plus the lights the orchestra members use to see the sheet music can be seen as ewell.

The NBC Special on Music Hall what a treat to see so much of the theater used,wonderful use of the main curtain, which is almost always missing from shows broadcast from there! All 36 Rocketts,all three elevators with more elevators perched upon them,the old plastic ice rink with skaters,and although I couldn’t see the camels in the Nativity scene I’m told they are still used in the show. Also four shows were taped to assemble the hour long program that we saw. One of the reasons for multiple tapings was to achieve as many different camera placements as possible. Loved the digital backgrounds to help the double decked bus take us around New York. I’m guessing the Bus was self battery propelled. One must guess that a live orchestra is not present for the show .

I am generally opposed to lip-syncing at any type of live performance. When I go to a live concert or a Broadway show, I expect to hear the performers singing LIVE not lipsyncing to pre-recorded tape. However, I really don’t consider the Radio City Christmas Show to be a live concert or a Broadway production, so I don’t hold the show to that same standard. I agree with Bob Endres and Vito… There’s just no way you can expect a group of precision dancers to tap and kick around the vast RCMH stage without getting winded. I’ve seen video clips of singers who have (bravely) sang live while performing energetic dance routines (Madonna and J-Lo come to mind) and the vocal performance suffered miserably as a result. In a show as highly polished and as filled with glitzy artifice as the RCMH Xmas spectacular, I think I’d give the producers a pass for utilizing a pre-recorded track. Had it been my professional choice to make, I think I’d have eliminated the need for lip-syncing entirely by simply having the music exist as a soundtrack to the Rockettes' number and would not have attempted to create the illusion that it was the dancers who were singing the lyrics. I hasten to add that my acceptance of the practice is limited to the big dance line. I do not condone the use of lip-syncing to pass for what should be a live non-dancing vocal performance. And I’m not particularly fond of using pre-recorded tap sounds for a live dance routine – unless live micing is truly not a technical feasibility.

Oh my, as far as this subject goes, I am done here

Thanks Bob for those thoughts. From a technical stand point, it seems to me, that the pre-recording is an asset to the performance.