Camels to Help Make Seoul Music

Six Australian camels are being played opera music to prepare them for an appearance in Aida in South Korea.

Just a few years ago the animals were roaming wild in Australia's central desert but next month they will be on stage in Seoul in a £3.1m production of Verdi's opera.

The six will appear for 10 minutes during the Triumphal March, one of the opera's most famous moments, along with 1,500 humans, 14 other camels, 60 horses, 12 chariots and an elephant.

They are believed to be the first Australian camels ever taken to South Korea and new regulations are being drafted for their 15-day quarantine on arrival.

They will be flown in specially constructed crates from Melbourne to Seoul at a cost of £40,500. The cost of bringing each animal to South Korea will be equivalent to the amount a backstage trainee at the Sydney Opera House would expect to earn in a year.

Preparing the animals to stand on stage will be more difficult.

"They've sent us files of all the opera music by email and we've been cranking them up on the speaker," said John Geappen, co-owner of Red Sun Camels, based in Broome, Western Australia. "They don't seem to pay much attention to it."

At the moment they are still working, taking tourists on night rides around Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock.

Logistics were less flexible when Aida was premiered in 1871: its first performance in Cairo was delayed for four months by the Franco-Prussian war.

No one is prepared to pay to bring the animals back to Australia, and they will work again for the tourist industry after their appearance.