If online travel forums and social media feeds are any indication, it’s not uncommon for travellers to visit a concert hall without ever attending an actual performance. Rather, they join in guided tours that focus on architecture and acoustics, performance history and personalities. Yet claims to take visitors ‘behind the scenes’ can vary, and some venues carefully edit their history. So what do you really get? I decided to road test five of the best backstage tours of concert halls around the world to find out just that…
The best backstage tours of concert halls around the world
Royal Albert Hall Tour, London
The Royal Albert Hall offers both backstage tours, which take in dressing rooms and underground loading bay, and a front-of-house survey, which I joined. Our guide, a whimsical, slightly Willy Wonka-like man, seemed intent on showing that the 153-year-old arena offers much more than classical fare, as we lingered before historic photos of boxing and tennis matches, circuses, politicians, authors and pop spectacles (each visitor was also given a handheld tablet featuring additional pictures).
The tour moved to the Royal Box, affording an up-close view of 20 red velvet seats, which the family’s staff are invited to use when the sovereigns themselves have other plans. We stopped in the Royal Retiring Room, a faded lounge lined with family portraits (and soon to receive a makeover). A sizeable chunk of the tour covered namesake Prince Albert, who is memorialised with a lobby portrait and 15,000 letter As adorning the staircase railings and other nooks.
When funds ran short in the 1860s, the hall planners sold £100 seats to donors, each with 999-year leases – meaning that some boxes have remained in families ever since. Unmentioned was that some seat holders sell their unwanted tickets at inflated prices, a practice that has sparked criticism and scrutiny in the House of Lords.
Later, we learned how rock concerts were banned for a period in the 1970s, as rowdy audiences nearly caused several ceilings to collapse, and how Pink Floyd in particular were put on the ‘do not book’ list for neglecting to inform hall management about an on-stage fireworks display.
A visit to the fifth-floor gallery, meanwhile, included a brief discussion of the fibreglass acoustic diffusers – the famous ‘mushrooms’ – and the once-problematic glass dome. Apart from a brief stop at the donors’ wall, the tour was free of commercial agendas, and an ongoing soundcheck provided the ambience of a working venue as we made our way round.
Join this backstage tour here.
Carnegie Hall Guided Tour, New York
One of Carnegie Hall’s guides whisked a dozen of us around the storied venue on one day in November, admonishing us to step quickly, scolding a visitor with a ringing phone, and otherwise playing the role of an endearingly irascible New Yorker.
Carnegie’s thrice-daily backstage tours focus on the main lobby, museum and 2,804-seat Stern Auditorium, while avoiding its smaller Weill Recital Hall and Zankel Hall. As we sat in the front row, our guide attributed the auditorium’s famed acoustics to its raised stage and absence of heavy curtains, chandeliers and right angles, all of which would impede good sound distribution.
Perhaps more debatable was a claim that Carnegie is ‘considered by musicians to be the number one concert hall for acoustics’, ahead of the Vienna Musikverein and Boston’s Symphony Hall. (Surveys of acousticians and musicians have often put those halls top).
Some intriguing titbits emerged: the microphones hanging over the seats are there so that house managers can monitor audience activity, including emergencies. The fourth-level dress circle was named after the smartly attired visitors who have paraded down its steep aisles. And nodding to Dutch visitors in our group, our guide explained how Carnegie Hall reflects American egalitarianism by avoiding partitioned boxes or spaces for dignitaries. (‘Europeans care more about their privacy than what’s happening on stage,’ he quipped).
The small museum revealed the nail and floorboard marking the spot on the stage where Vladimir Horowitz’s piano should always sit, even though he insisted on trying different placements with each visit. And the story of how Carnegie Hall was rescued from the wrecking ball in 1960 – thanks to a campaign led by violinist Isaac Stern – was told with some pride, a reminder that this tour might not exist had the political winds blown differently.
Join this backstage tour here.
Barbican Centre Architecture Tour, London
Whether you love or hate Brutalist architecture, this 90-minute, mostly outdoor walking tour will surely open your eyes to its raw aesthetic, showing how the Barbican Centre arose as a utopian city-within-a-city, starting after the Second World War.
As we climbed through the multi-layered concrete edifice, our guide – a young woman with a nuanced passion for her subject – explained how the Centre was designed to lure upper-middle-class professionals to the City, whose population was reduced to just 48 residents after wartime bombings and fire.
Some 4,000 live here today, partaking in the restaurants, schools, doctors’ offices, gardens, church and cultural facilities that are arrayed around an artificial lake. The closest we physically got to the 2,000-seat concert hall was standing atop its roof – the cultural venues were all carved into the ground so as not to block the light and views of the residents.
For all of the Barbican’s hard-edged expanses, the tour excelled in highlighting its meticulously planned details: the hand-chiselled surfaces of the concrete walls, the obsession with semi-circular forms, the wooden shutters and gondola shapes meant to evoke a Mediterranean getaway. Nor did the tour avoid the centre’s dysfunctional elements, including its Silk Street entrance beside the loading dock.
‘It was a bit like turning your back on the outside world,’ our guide noted of an elevated walkway on its south perimeter. Conspicuously avoided was the Barbican’s ongoing redevelopment project that has sparked some scepticism among architecture critics. Still, our guide sounded a cautionary note when she pointed to the visual traces of a 1990s refurbishment, much of which was later undone.
Join this tour here.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Tour, New York
While many of Lincoln Center’s recent programming initiatives have been aggressively aimed at reaching younger, more diverse crowds, its guided tour felt largely agenda-free, giving proportionate focus to the various arts organisations on campus. Only when a tour participant asked about the Mostly Mozart Festival, which was discontinued last summer after 57 years, was there an off-key note, as our amiable guide suggested that it carries on as usual. (Since I went on the tour, the Center has announced plans for the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, featuring a more eclectic programming line-up).
After meeting in the recently renovated David Geffen Hall (which finally got its acoustic right, our guide offered), we walked across the travertine campus to the 1962 David H Koch Theater, home to New York City Ballet, where we were told that the auditorium’s shape mimics the oval-shaped first position of a ballet dancer.
A private event kept the Metropolitan Opera House off-limits on this afternoon, while at Alice Tully Hall, we ventured backstage to eyeball the reinforced wall that muffles nearby subway noise and to observe the auditorium’s swooping interior, its curves reflecting those of a cello. Back outside, we paused beneath a mural depicting the residents of San Juan Hill, the predominantly Black and Latino neighbourhood that was razed to build the complex, displacing 7,000 residents.
But largely, the tour was delivered with a light touch, sprinkled with amusing tales such as the 1969 Met premiere of Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, in which Leontyne Price became trapped inside a malfunctioning pyramid. Such stories may be familiar to seasoned classical music fans, but my fellow visitors seemed satisfied.
Join this backstage tour here.
Metropolitan Opera Backstage Tour, New York
While most tours are in the business of touting their plush public spaces, the Met’s 75-minute backstage tour takes you behind the iconic gold curtain. Included on this visit were stops at carpentry, welding, costume and wig shops, along with a peak into the rehearsal and dressing rooms.
Spanning several floors, the tour unfolds in an unglamorous warren of corridors lined with fluorescent lights and cinder block walls. At one point, we were delayed because of a stuck lift. At another, we scampered around power tools being applied to the new Carmen set.
The Met took over the backstage tours last autumn from the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a supporting non-profit group that shut down amid financial troubles. Our guide, a veteran opera-goer, showed no signs of inexperience, however. Outside the costume shop, jackets and dresses were labelled and stuffed onto racks while inside, mannequins mimicked the distinct shapes of individual singers. Wigs fashioned from human hair were set out, recently washed and blow-dried. We stopped to observe the animal entrance, also used by celebrities hoping to avoid paparazzi on the plaza.
In the carpentry shop, Styrofoam scenery cluttered one corner, its lightweight material able to move effortlessly on stage. The opera house was designed to hold a season’s worth of scenery, but nowadays excess sets are stored in facilities in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Though the tour was sprinkled with opera lore – we paused to hear about the great soprano Maria Callas and her tempestuous relationship with former general manager Rudolf Bing – it was principally about the hundreds of people who seldom get to bask in the spotlight.
Join this backstage tour here.
Musikverein Backstage Tour, Vienna
The Musikverein in Vienna (host of the annual Vienna New Year's Day Concert) offers 45-minute daily tours in English and German.
Join this backstage tour here.
La Scala Backstage Tour, Milan
Milan’s La Scala features tours in English, French and German that survey the theatre and adjacent museum.
We named La Scala one of the best opera houses in the world.
Join this backstage tour here.
Walt Disney Concert Hall Backstage Tour, Los Angeles
Stateside, Walt Disney Concert Hall offers both free self-guided audio tours and, for subscribers, guided tours often provided an hour or so before concerts.
We named the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ as one of the best organs in the world.
Join this backstage tour here.
Symphony Hall Backstage Tour, Boston
And in Boston, Symphony Hall offers a free, 90-minute tours of its public spaces and, when available, select behind-the-scenes areas. Shorter tours are also available before Saturday and Casual Friday performances.
Join this backstage tour here.
Kennedy Center Backstage Tour, Washington DC
Washington DC’s Kennedy Center presents several free daily guided backstage tours of the arts complex’s campus, with the option to request guides in non-English languages.
Join this backstage tour here.
Teatro Colón Backstage Tour, Buenos Aires
Further afield, visitors to Buenos Aires can admire the gilded spaces of the Teatro Colón in daily English and Spanish tours.
Join this backstage tour here.
Sydney Opera House Backstage Tour, Australia
Go behind the sails of the Sydney Opera House in daily, one-hour backstage tours.
Find out more about the surprising history of the Sydney Opera House here.
Join this backstage tour here.
