- published: 25 Sep 2012
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An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building. While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other opera houses are part of larger performing arts centers.
The first public opera house was the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice, Italy, which opened in 1637. Italy, where opera has been popular through the centuries among ordinary people as well as wealthy patrons, still has a large number of opera houses. When Henry Purcell was composing, there was no opera house in London. The first opera house in Germany was built in Hamburg in 1678. Early U.S. opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, and vaudeville shows as well as operas and other musical events.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, opera houses were often financed by rulers, nobles, and wealthy people who used patronage of the arts to endorse their political ambitions and social positions or prestige. With the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. In the 2000s, most opera and theaters raise funds from a combination of government and institutional grants, ticket sales and, to a smaller extent, private donations.
Danny Bhoy (born Danni Chaudhry on 17 January 1974) is a Scottish comedian who has performed in New Zealand, the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States. He is half-Indian and half-Scottish.
Bhoy was born in Moffat, Scotland, one of four children and attended Lockerbie Academy and all-boys private school Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh.
His humour is observational, often involving his own personal experiences as an international comedian. While he does mention his Indian heritage, it is often a quick reference and never the focus of the show. Despite his stage name, Bhoy is not a fan of Celtic F.C., his favourite team is Newcastle United.
He began stand up in 1998 after going to see his first comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival. A year later, he won The Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award, Britain's biggest competition for comedy newcomers. In 2001, Danny took his first full length solo show to the Edinburgh Festival, where, within a week, he had sold out his entire three-week run, and added extra shows to cope with the demand for tickets.