A Tour of the Opera House- through the Manager's Eyes

The tour begins at top of opera house so one moves briskly through the auditorium, up stairs beside the stage, around the back, up more stairs, growing steeper by the step, leaving carpet and linoleum behind to walk on bare wooden boards.

First stop is in the old flat at the back of the fly floor, now used as a storage area. On left is an old matchlined bedroom, to the right is another bedroom while in the  middle is kitchen. 

On the steep bank behind are a few fruit trees, possibly planted to provide fresh fruit for the families who lived in this gloomy, south-facing dwelling.

When families were large their sleeping quarters overflowed onto a mezzanine where the Opera House electrics are now installed. Managers also had a lounge, bathroom and toilet. While the exact location of the original bathroom is uncertain the  toilet still exists. It is long narrow room with copper water cistern and pull chain. This toilet pan and the one on the mezzanine floor below were made by the Wedgwood company and are much-appreciated originals. A narrow window lights up the much painted match-lining  and brown linoleum,  also probably original. The same linoleum used to cover the stairs but Friends  have removed it and laid carpet. A heavy lead surround about the toilet pan demonstrates an old-style way of  lining the floor to prevent water dripping through to the stories below.

To reach the highest part of the Opera House, we climb a narrow steeply sloping flight of stairs, fortunately not the upright ladder to be found in many other theatres. En route we pass the fibrolite wall between the auditorium and the stage,  put in as a fire wall after the 1937 fire. Signatures on wall  recall the history in a different way and include those of crew members from shows including Rick Dodds from  Snow White and Seven Dwarfs in 1981. Early, possibly rare examples of earlier posters advertising Romeo and Juliet, the Theatre Royal, Cinderella and J C Williamson’s  shows bring to mind companies which no longer exist. Others downstairs are protected with wallboard, but in time the Friends hope to uncover them so people can read them. 

It’s a matter of money and working out how to protect them first. Opera House files contain programmes for more recent shows including  Joseph and his Technicoloured Dream Coat starring Rob Guest . Most are Amdram programmes, including one of  the Merry Widow with John performing.

At the top of the narrow grid stairs is  a door which opens into the main roof space of auditorium where, immediately in front and behind us, are fire-blackened timbers again from the 1937 fire. John notes that “if you scrape that off you get good timber underneath.” But the fire’s the reason for the fire-retardant lining below while modern fire requirements are the reasons for the large red pipes running through the space, the sprinkler system the Friends put in five years ago.

Just below the roof space topping the dome is a special material known as lathe plaster. It is one reason why the acoustics are so good. It takes the echo out of the theatre. John notes, “We have to be careful not to paint the other side with reflective paint or it will bounce straight back.”

The plaster can not be trodden on either because it is so delicate that “if you put your foot on it you'll go straight through”. Even dusting the place with a vacuum cleaner could cause problems because “if you knock those little ridges off it will just come away as one big sheet of plaster. There's not too many tradesmen in this day and age who can repeat the process.” If that happened it would be a costly exercise to reline it with modern Gibraltar board.  

Back to the mezzanine floor (or what in theatre terms is called the balcony) are four dressing rooms.  Number Seven Dressing room is the ballet room, known as the McDouall/Peggy Wallis room, a trust which has donated over $17,000 to Friends from performances in the Opera House. The room is now carpeted for warmth. Old light fittings remain in place while heater fittings demonstrate the units were originally designed for use with  coal gas and later converted to natural gas. The other dressing rooms on this level are a little smaller.

From here we drop down to stage level. To one side is the annexe - tacked on to the side of the building in 1938. t is a huge, corrugated iron sided, concreted floored space with a removable dock, used when trains transported goods regularly to and from the city. The depot was a block and a half down the road on Taupo Quay.

“Railways would drive in a flat deck truck right in at ground level to load and unload in the dry. We can go back a little bit further than that to the days of the  town wharf. The company came up with a truck and loaded the stage gear onto a cargo boat. But we can't go back to horse and dray because this bit didn't exist then.”

The 18 ft (5.5m) high, original entry doors provide the link between the annexe and the opera  house which explains the weatherboard on one side. Watermarks down the boards indicate that in heavy rain the building leaks.

On the other side of this, back in the Opera House, are more steep stairs to the basement. A brick wall to one side is part of the foundations. Through a door to a partly- below ground storage cupboard  is the original outside wall complete with a window and a roughly poured concrete foundation. Immediately opposite and through another door the generator room, the site of the most recent fire. The window through which the arsonist dumped a car tyre and other accelerants is now sealed up. Charred timbers sealed with varnish are a solemn reminder of the dangers the Opera House has survived. Overhead is the  sprinkler which doused the fire before it could do much damage. It still cost the Insurance Co $10,000 by the time the equipment had been stripped and cleaned. Inside the room the original DC switchboard is still visible but the old generating plant is long gone, sold by the council for scrap. All the switch gear, apart from the electro magnetic switch to drive  the existing generator, was all here from the start. A switch beneath the electro magnetic switch was installed when the tramways were running and the Opera House was able to switch the supply from the tramway to its own generating plant.

The generating plant, a fully operational 110 V DC generator capable of 100 amps load, is not used for anything in particular, not even emergencies because it requires power to drive it. It is driven by a 3-phase motor and was used until about 15 years ago to drive the projectors and follow spots. Carbons are no longer available  for the follow spots  and were replaced with a modern equivalent. Even those have now been updated. The room also contains a small petrol-driven emergency lighting plant.  It has been needed twice in John’s experience.

“Once was during a band concert when we had had attrocious weather. The power company wanted to wash the insulators down on a substation so they chopped the power to the central city area. We had 600 people in the auditorium so we let them see what was goings on by means of that generating plant for 20 mins. It didn’t worry them.”

Also in the cellar is probably the closest thing the Opera House has to a green room. It is directly below the stage, provides storage, and four small dressing rooms. Colour coded pipes indicate water, gas and electrical conduit, being blue is for water, yellow for gas, red for fire mains, and orange for electrical. The colourful pillars are the legacy of one of the early student holiday programmes  when around half a dozen students  chose some paint and painted the pillars and walls. The green room is still used by ballet students during Christmas performances. Then it is filled with children  and television sets everywhere. That way the performers can watch what's going on stage through closed circuit television, and know when their turn comes.

At the rear of the theatre  is another addition to the building, now containing toilets and a shower for performers. They were added in 1983 when the building code required it be concrete block. Originally the block contained two toilets.  The flush units were retained but the pans replaced. Once again windows have been barred to prevent thieves entering this way.

At stage level are three dressing rooms, again barred for protection of cast property. At times passports, handbags and other belongings have gone missing, especially in the heat of summer. These dressing rooms all have names, each to commemorate a trust which has donated substantial sums to the Opera House. These include the Arthur Wheeler Trust, and the William McAlpine Duncan Trust.

Beyond these is the refloored stage. On prompt side of stage is the prop room and grand piano storage. A planned extension will include a door on this side, where a window is now. This will provide paraplegic entry from ground level to the stage. From here the  second switchboard installed in the building is visible. In operation until 1983 it contains 12  row dimmers capable of 3 KW and 12 capable of 2 KW. Although it is fully operational the theatre today uses electronics with computerised control, both, easier and safer from a technician’s viewpoint.

The auditorium has experienced minor changes, and redecoration since its construction. Upstairs the front six rows of the circle are original, with some alterations  to the curve of the seats around the proscenium arch after the 1937 fire.

In 1996 the Friends shifted the aisle so it was straight through and put in handrails. The floor shows that it has once been carpeted. Originally the circle stopped just behind the entrance way. But approximately 200 seats were added later. One of the staircases into the circle  was added on, and a close look at the windows shows half the window is covered, proof that the area was originally open. Behind this area, at the top of the stairs are the bar and sweet stall. When they were installed a ceiling was added,. The walls  are match lined., the timber taken from other parts of the theatre and re-machined to create new match-lining. Originally there were two toilets upstairs, on this level, one tucked away in each corner.

The foyer downstairs was originally not a foyer but the committee room. In 1937 when the segregated audience entry was altered the builders opened up the bottom committee room. Previously the staircase from outside came straight up to the circle, which meant those sitting in the dress circle did not need to mingle with those in the stalls and pit stalls. However, when the committee room  was opened up and made it into a foyer another  staircase was added. Part of the upstairs area became the gents’ toilets and another, round the corner, contained the ladies’. These days the area contains the Trust Bank lounge complete with bar and sweet stall.  An original sweet stall  in this area was opened in 1989 and used before the renovations were completed. The income provided some funds for restoration work.

Doors at the rear of the foyer originally led directly into the auditorium. Now they lead into a softly carpeted hallway, with a wall separating it from the rest of the theatre. The wall was erected by the Friends in 1993 when the seating was also altered.

The original entrances on both sides of building were blocked off at the same time, and new ushers rooms and upgraded public toilets were installed.

Either side of the highly varnished wooden foyer are narrow doors  leading to the box office and main office. The one on the right when facing street was created as the box office when the segregated entrance doors were removed. The other is now used as a computer room but was probably one of the selling points when the audience was segregated. Decorations on tops of the pillars were added when the space was turned into a foyer while the ceiling fittings were installed in 1995 when Gibraltar board was put up to replace pinex.