My First Time Seeing an Orchestra Live!

Hi everyone,

In todays post I will talking about the time that I went to see an orchestra perform live for the very time, and oh boy! It was an experience, but not in a good way.

I went to see my very first Orchestra back in 2010; and I was really excited to go as I had never seen an orchestra live before. This was also my very first visit to the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

  The performance was entitled 'Friday Fright Night', and it was held on the Friday 29th October 2010 at 7.30pm. We were sat in the stalls, four rows from the stage.

'Friday Fright Night' was an evening of spooky themed classical music, which I thought would be a great introduced for myself to go and see an orchestra, as I'm familiar with quite a lot of well known spooky classical music.

I was looking forward to this performance for about six months, as I think we booked the tickets in March 2010.

It's the day of the performance, and everything was fine before the performance started and everything was fine upon taking our seats in auditorium. The start of the first half was absolutely fine; and then the young child who was sat at the side of me wouldn't sit still and I can remember their parent was trying to get them to sit still. So, during the intermission the parents changed seats with the child. This wasn't even the worst of it. 

  So, the second act of the performance starts and it opens with 'Hedwig's Theme' from Harry Potter; there's a mother and daughter sat at the other side of me. So, while the orchestra are playing 'Hedwig's Theme'; the mother says quite loudly to the daughter "Have you still got Harry Potter?". Because it was said so loudly quite a few turned around to see who it was. Also, when the mother asked her daughter this question; they then started to have a full on conversation in the middle of the performance, and they didn't care that they was other people around them trying to watch the rest of the performance. Then to top it off, after the orchestra had finished their performance for the evening and everyone was leaving the auditorium to go home; a full on argument broke out between the first few rows of seats regarding the way that mother and daughter behaved during the second part of the performance. I genuinely couldn't believe what I was witnessing, and all I wanted to do was leave.

It took nine years to get myself back to the Bridgewater Hall, and that was I got the heads up that 'Breaking the Rules' was doing a performance at the Bridgewater Hall for one night only.

If you ever go to a theatre production, orchestra performance or a concert; please just respect the other people around you. As it can have a similar affect on other people to what I had, and this isn't fair on other people around you who have also paid money to see the performance.