This somewhat forced allusion to my favorite Vietnamese film, Tran Anh Hung's The Vertical Ray of the Sun, is about a War Memorial Opera House peculiarity that will surprise some and prompt others to say, perhaps with a sneer: "Who didn't know that?"
It started for me last week at a matinee of Moby-Dick; just before the performance began, the gentleman sitting in front of me, in J-21, pointed at the chandelier and said: "Watch how the lights go off, in a [something] pattern." I didn't catch what 'something' was, but it sounded like something maritime, or naval, that sort of thing, appropriate to the Melville story.
And then it happened, something I've never seen before, the lights in the chandelier going off one by one, in a circular, bernoullian pattern. Wow!
What made this a story so notable is that nobody in-the-know that I asked has ever heard of this — in addition to my own three-decade-long ignorance.
I refused to acquiesce to denial of my "vision" or resort to the Thor Heyerdahl response when his men on the Kon Tiki woke him to up to ask about an exotic-looking fish they just caught. "There is no such fish," said the great explorer, and went back to sleep.
Yes, there was a dimming fish, and I must know what it was. A friend was on watch at the next performance, and she managed to record it.
Apparently, it happens only before the beginning of a performance, not after intermissions. But has it been like this since the 1996 reconstruction? How would you know unless you behave like turkeys in rain — and you know the consequences of that.
Checking with the man in charge, General Director David Gockley, who used the chandelier for the company logo, resulted in this information:
This pre-dates the [1996] renovation and, as far as I can tell, existed from the very beginning. It "goes off" only at the top of the show. The stagehand electricians control it and it is part of the routine of starting a show.
So, next time take a look at this gorgeous six-tier chandelier, and don't bother to Google the size (it's 25 feet in diameter and 14 feet tall) ... And it has nothing to do with whales.