The House (television documentary)
| The House | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Documentary |
| Directed by | Michael Waldman |
| Narrated by | Jancis Robinson |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Edward Mirzoeff |
| Producer(s) | Andrew Bethell |
| Location(s) | Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Westminster, London, England, UK |
| Production company(s) | BBC Productions |
| Release | |
| Original network | BBC2 |
| Picture format | 4:3 |
| Audio format | Stereo |
| Original release | 16 January – 20 February 1996 |
The House is a "fly on the wall" documentary television series in six episodes which showed various behind-the-scenes events at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It was filmed by the BBC in 1995, and first broadcast on BBC2 in early 1996 to an audience of four million viewers.
Stella Bruzzi, in New documentary, describes the series as having been "the immediate precursor to docusoaps (which the BBC produced) and factual entertainment." The production team was "directly involved in illustrating and manufacturing the confrontations and issues raised by its content, most concretely through Jancis Robinson's arch and critical voice-over".
The series received a lot of publicity. Reactions in the press and elsewhere perhaps came as a surprise to the staff of the Opera House, who had co-operated with the film-makers. Indeed the senior management had seen it twice before transmission, without raising any complaints. The BBC's website noted that the documentary "disclosed the rifts and acrimony behind the scenes";New York magazine commented "A six-part BBC documentary revealed the establishment to be as rife with power struggles and diva fits offstage as on."Michael Kaiser, who became general director of the Opera House in 1998, remarked that "The House only confirmed the general belief that the Royal Opera House was, at best, incompetent, and, at worst, completely devoted to the needs of the rich."
However, while Peter Popham in The Independent mentioned the "six-week display of dirty laundry courtesy of the BBC's documentary cameras", he later pointed out that "for all the moaning about unfairness that preceded the showing of The House, the documentary series has done Covent Garden enormous good in terms of public interest; requests to join the mailing list have poured in, and ticket sales are up. Whatever the backstage controversies the programme exposed, it also revealed the true glamour and excitement of an opera house's work, which has nothing to do with tedious arguments about elitism."
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