orchestra pit

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English

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Orchestra pit in Minsk Opera and Ballet Theater

Alternative forms

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Noun

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orchestra pit (plural orchestra pits)

  1. (performing arts) A sunken area in front of a stage in which musicians, largely hidden from view, play music to accompany stage performances.
    • 1921, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 14, in Jill the Reckless:
      On the stage of the Gotham gloom reigned. . . . Johnson Miller was pacing the gangway between the orchestra pit and the first row of the orchestra chairs.
    • 1939 December 18, “Music: Rachmaninoff”, in Time, retrieved 11 January 2018:
      Thirty-four years ago a gaunt young Russian with a crew haircut took over the job as chief conductor in the orchestra pit of Moscow's Imperial Grand Theatre.
    • 2016 October 29, Michael Cooper, Christopher Mele, “Powder Tossed at Metropolitan Opera May Have Been Human Ashes, Police Say”, in New York Times, retrieved 11 January 2018:
      An audience member at the Metropolitan Opera sprinkled a powdery substance — what the police said may have been the ashes of his mentor — into the orchestra pit during an intermission of a performance on Saturday, setting off a police investigation and the cancellation of the rest of that opera.

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