Your review of Carmen at the Royal Opera House (A luminous Micaëla upstages Tracey the donkey,21 October) describes a cast list that includes a horse, a donkey and some chickens.
It reminded me of the time when the same opera was conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham at the same venue. It was the custom then to lend a exiguous verisimilitude to proceedings by hiring one of the many horses locally employed in Covent Garden market. On this occasion, and during the scene in the robbers’ cave,the horse at one point turned his back on the audience and defecated on stage.
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Source: theguardian.com