ENO's elephant is rather fine but alas, not real

See the second pic shown with my review - here: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/11/aida_at_eno.php

The Royal Opera's Carmen and Katya Kabanova have real horses, and ENO's Magic Flute has four live doves (but the bears aren't real )  ENO's staging of the St John Passion had a real lamb, which broke the sombre atmosphere as the final chord died away by bleating loudly.

As for Ellen Kent/Chisinau etc, has Tosca done her incredible leap of death recently?   (P.S. The horse in past Ellen Kent Carmen tours has been a "dazzling Andalusian white stallion" - so they must have got a new one!)

Does the ancient Royal Opera production of La Boheme still give Musetta a real lapdog?

The post-war Boris production at the Garden (still going strong when I saw it with Christoff in the lead during the early 1970s) had a very fine horse for one of Dmitri's entrances.

As for the Chisinau horses, it rather depends on the venue: 'Louis, the majestic black stallion' has not been billed on the posters for Dundee or Aberdeen, though I can't for the moment recall exactly which canine celeb was slated for the part: one of rather more local origin, no doubt. Singers and musicians can be slung into cheap accomodation (or even sleep on coaches overnight), but animals are considerably more costly to transport (not to mention to stable temporarily).

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Aaaargghh... why do people make that distinction...?

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Theatre people make that distinction because they have different unions, Ruth: simple as that. (The M.U. is a stronger organisation by far,)

The old Covent Garden production of Don Carlo had a very impressive pair of hounds for Philip to walk on with -- were they Irish wolfhounds?

And the WNO From the House of the Dead had a real eagle, where most other productions I know of have settled for a fake/stuffed/symbolic/imaginary one.

Prompted by this thread I rang my dad for stories of animals onstage at Covent Garden and what a lot of memories came flooding back for him! (He was in the ROH chorus for about 20 years.)
Re Moses... he says the stage was full of animals - goats, calves etc- "All the noise had quite an effect on their bowels...the pong was quite something. The stage was awash by the end of the show and we had a hell of a job not to slip, especially as we were on a slope." Sounds delightful!


He says that the little dog which was in the production in the 70s actually belonged to a female member of the chorus, who looked on anxiously as he was passed from waiter to waiter at the end of the act.

Apparently, when he was standing in the wings waiting to go on, that horse would whinny back to the strings' whinny in the orchestra - if I had a score I could quote it, it's obviously a very realistic musical whinny - what higher praise could Mussorgsky have than that?

My dad recalls that many of the animals belonged to a lady, he thinks Finnish, with a small farm. She'd often accompany her animals onstage, and being very slight, could pass as a page boy. She would come onstage with Alfio's horse in Cav, mingling with the chorus, petting him as Alfio sang his song.

The audience was highly amused one night as a chorus member went offstage and returned with a rather modern-looking dustpan and brush to clean up after the donkey in Carmen.

Yes they were, and he says Christoff used to upstage Elisabetta singing her farewell to the Countess by petting and playing with them.

A memory of mine now. There were cats strolling across the stage during Madam Butterfly in Verona - but of course there weren't meant to be!

They should have used one of ENO's Magic Flute doves.  They always seem perfectly behaved!