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Listen to an audio Introduction to accessibility at the Royal Albert Hall, narrated by Timna Fibert.

Transcript:

This is an Audio Introduction to the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Proms, including accessibility information, and descriptions of the exterior and interior of the Royal Albert Hall, where the proms are held. It will take about five minutes to listen to.

The Royal Albert Hall is a vast circular Victorian building with walls of austere red-brick, crowned with a dome of iron and glass. Terracotta-framed windows punctuate the brick, and a frieze of classical figures runs in a ribbon beneath the roofline.

There will be stewards at doors around the circumference of the building to check tickets and guide you to the right entrance. For Audio Described performances, headsets can be collected at the Information Desk just inside Door 6. There is one step up to the foyer from Door 6, and two steps up to the information desk. The nearest step-free access to can be found at Door 8. Accessible toilets on the ground floor can be found in Door 4 porch, Door 8 porch, and at Door 12. When it’s time for the performance to begin, stewards will be available to help you find your seats.

Stepping inside The Royal Albert Hall’s vast auditorium, the domed ceiling towers over the space, reaching a height of 42 metres at its highest point. When it was first built, this dome was a problem for performers; sound would bounce off the dome, causing an echo. To combat this problem, 85 white fibreglass saucers now hang from the auditorium ceiling, diffusing the sound. These saucers are sometimes referred to as ‘mushrooms’ – clustered above us, their smooth rounded tops look as though a field of white toadstools has sprung from the roof.
Black lighting rigs are peppered around the ceiling between the mushrooms. Their beams are incredibly powerful, and when directed through the empty air of the auditorium, the shafts of light widen across the distance to illuminate the stage far below, or ripple over the heads of the crowd. For relaxed performances, the hall lights will be left up, and lighting effects will be kept to a minimum.

Seven layers of seating ring the space, with capacity for just under 5,300 people. Close to the ceiling are a series of towering archways, around 12 metres high (which amounts to 6 and a half double basses). Below these archways is a stretch of red-chaired seating, sloping down towards the ground. Under this, there are three levels of box seating, with plush curtains of red velvet framing the dark boxes. Beneath that are the stalls, another seating area sloping down towards the ground.

Right in front of the stage is the ‘pit’ – a circular area with a red floor, where prommers stand, sit on the floor, or sometimes, on fold-out seats they’ve brought from home.

At shoulder height from the pit, the flat, semi-circular stage looks as though a wedge has been cut out of the stalls seating, like a slice of cake has been removed from one side of the hall. It’s accessed by two entrances on the right and left, and its floor is decorated with a pattern of triangles, in different shades of grey. Behind it are three levels of amphitheatre steps, each about a metre high, which are often used as orchestra seating during the performances.

Above the amphitheatre steps, an unbroken strip of curved LED screen continues the circle of the hall. Depending on the performance, it can display abstract graphics, videos, or the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Proms logo. Sitting above this strip, the bronze bust of Henry Wood watches over the orchestra. Wood held the first ever prom in 1895, and this statue continues to oversee every performance.
Directly behind the bust rises the Hall’s gargantuan organ, once the biggest instrument in the world. It protrudes from the wall, encased in gilded wood. The organ has 9,999 pipes – the smallest the size of a straw, the tallest 13 metres, a thick tube that reaches up to the apex of the columns close to the dome. Archways in the wood frame bristling rows of grey pipes, like stalagmites in an ice cave.

The configuration of the orchestra changes for each prom. On one night, gleaming percussion instruments might crown the top step of the amphitheatre steps, timpani drums, gongs, and xylophones presiding over the woodwind and brass who play from lower steps. The lacquered woods of the strings section, arranged on the flat of the stage below, flash their bows in synchrony. For a different prom, the amphitheatre steps might be peopled by a choir, dressed smartly in black, singing together above the heads of the orchestra on the flat, but all facing the gold-railed platform at the front of the stage, where their conductor holds the orchestra in time with the sweep of a white baton.

That concludes the Audio Introduction to the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Proms.

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