orchestra pit

• orchestra-pit

orchestra pit (plural orchestra pits)

1. (performing arts) A sunken area in front of a stage in which musicians, largely hidden from view, play music to accompany stage performances.
   • 1921, P. G. Wodehouse, Jill the Reckless, ch. 14:

     On the stage of the Gotham gloom reigned. . . . Johnson Miller was pacing the gangway between the orchestra pit and the first row of the orchestra chairs.

   • 1939 December 18, "Music: Rachmaninoff," Time (retrieved 11 Jan 2018):

     Thirty-four years ago a gaunt young Russian with a crew haircut took over the job as chief conductor in the orchestra pit of Moscow's Imperial Grand Theatre.

   • 2016 October 29, Michael Cooper and Christopher Mele, "Powder Tossed at Metropolitan Opera May Have Been Human Ashes, Police Say," New York Times (retrieved 11 Jan 2018):

     An audience member at the Metropolitan Opera sprinkled a powdery substance — what the police said may have been the ashes of his mentor — into the orchestra pit during an intermission of a performance on Saturday, setting off a police investigation and the cancellation of the rest of that opera.