About a month ago, I did something I'd been putting off for years: I joined the Opera League of Los Angeles. What does that mean, you ask? The Opera League is basically the official fan club for the Los Angeles Opera company. I've been a semi-regular opera goer for the past decade or so. If I remember correctly, the first LA Opera I saw was Charles Gaunot's Faust back in February 2000. That wasn't my first opera ever, though. During a five-week trip to Europe in the summer of '99, I caught a couple operas in Prague (including Mozart's Cosi fan tutte in the same opera house where they filmed Amadeus!) as well as Wagner's Lohengrin in Vienna, which still ranks as one of my favorite operas ever. Being part of the Opera League is similar to subscribing to your local NPR station. You pay an annual fee in return for a membership card and discounts at various shops and restaurants. In addition, you get invited to various opera-related shindigs, be they seminars, master classes, or just informal get-togethers. On the first Monday of every month, for instance, they put on what's called Opera Talk at Julienne's, where any member can show up at the restaurant Julienne's in San Marino to talk opera, hang out, drink, shoot the operatic shit. I'd long known about the Opera League because they never fail to plug it during the pre-performance lectures. These lectures are one nice thing about LA Opera that distinguishes it from every other company I've come across. One hour before every performance, up in the mezzanine lobby, they'll have someone give a lecture on the history and background of the opera we're about to see. The lecturer is usually a professor from a local college or a DJ from KUSC. After the Opera League plug, I'd always tell myself, "Ya know, I really should join!" But you know how it is. You eventually get home and deal with other stuff and soon enough you forget about it. Life happens.
Within a week or so of joining last month, I received an invitation for an event they held last night at the opera house downtown (officially called the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion). Entitled Backstage Magic, this is something the League apparently puts on every spring, free to all members (for most events they charge a fee of $25 or so). The theme, as you might guess from the title, is the behind the scenes world of staging an opera. As a regular for a while now, I've long speculated about the innumerable crew workers who toil away for months just to mount even one of these bad boys. I was wrong, as it turns out. They begin toiling not months, but years before any given opera is due to go on. Specifically, last night's event focused on the technicalities of preparing scenery. The speaker was this chap called Kleeman, Jeff Kleeman. His official title is technical director. Production designer Rupert Hemmings was also supposed to be there, but he bailed 'cause he was closing a deal on a house. As a bonus, though, the invitation said that there'd be lots of free food and booze. Naturally I accepted.
The doors opened at seven. The entire evening would be happening up in the mezzanine lobby. In fact, when I got up there, it looked like they were gearing up for a pre-performance lecture. They had all those folding chairs arranged in a semi-circle around the mobile black stage that's set up in front of the glass walls that open up to the balcony encircling the entire structure. The big difference between this arrangement and the lecture is that here, to both sides of the floor, they had buffets of grub and bar tenders offering free and unlimited amounts of wine. The food wasn't bad either, what with goat cheese cakes (oh yes!), chicken and cheese sandwiches and the mozzarella, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. Mind you, the vast majority of Thursday nights see me on my couch eating microwave 'corn and a pre-made deli sandwich from the grocery store, so suffice it to say that I stuffed my face.
At seven-thirty Opera League president Dorothy Wait stepped up to the mic and told everyone to take their seats. Like three-quarters of the attendees last night, Dorothy is in her golden years. She went through her list to thank just about everyone she could think of for making last night possible. No, you don't understand. She was giving shout-outs to everyone from the people who helped pay for the food to the people who helped stamp and seal all the invites that went out. She even thanked so-and-so for finding the little graphic for the invitation, that one black-and-white-blink-and-you-won't-know-a-graphic-was-ever-there graphic. Looking at it closely (because it's so small), it's this little painting of performers in a theater that looks a couple centuries old. So anyway, she thanked whoever it was who found that. Dorothy also thanked us all for being there. This free event was a thank-you to members, and she wanted to be sure we all knew that. In no time she reminded me of everyone's grandmother. Heck, her first name's even Dorothy, same as my late paternal grandmother.
After she stepped off the stage and took her seat front and center, this guy Gary Murphy came up to give a brief spiel. Head of communications and public relations, Gare's this short little fortysomething guy with glasses who reminded me of that character actor Bob Balaban, only with perfectly combed (albeit thinning) hair on top. He didn't talk for very long, and that's too bad. Gare's an excellent speaker. I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering his title. The main point of his spiel was to expand on Dorothy's gratitude toward members for giving up money and time to further the outreach of Los Angeles Opera, as well as to talk about all the stuff that's coming up later this season as well as next season. Included in that is an event that will probably be my next Opera League post, a three-hour seminar on the second Saturday in May that'll delve into the two operas they're staging this spring to close their 2007-08 season: Tosca and La Rondine, both by our man Puccini. Another thing he talked about that made me all giddy was their upcoming full-blown production of...wait for it...the Ring Cycle! You've heard of Wagner's Ring Cycle, right? It's this gargantuan sixteen-hour(!) epic that's split into a quartet of four four-hour operas. LA Opera will be putting on the first two next year, followed by parts three and four in the 2009-10 season. In the words of Wagner himself: "Aw-haw yeah-heahhhhhh!"
And that's when our main man Jeff Kleeman took the stage to give what would be about a 90-minute lecture on just about every duty (obstacle?) he has to juggle to make all the gorgeous scenery a reality. No, really. As a grizzled vet of LA Opera, I can say unequivocally that this bunch has never spared any expense for their sets, or any imagination for that matter. Perhaps they feel an unspoken obligation to do that since they're a very young company and should therefore aspire constantly to break the mold instead of recycle what other companies do. Indeed, LA Opera's practically nascent compared to most everyone else. They've only been around since 1986, versus 1883 for the Met, not to speak of the European companies, which have been around since the dawn of man.
I can't help laughing as I write this, thinking of Jeff. Seriously. You know ZZ Top, right? That one rock group with all those dudes with super long beards and sunglasses? They always wear those sunglasses. Okay. Now imagine if, finally, at long last, one of them finally removed those shades. That's when you'd have Jeff Kleeman, Technical Director of Los Angeles Opera. Wow, there's a superhero idea in there somewhere. In his forties or so, Jeff's got this super long salt-and-pepper beard. His black hair is pulled back taut with a very long and very thin braided pony tail hanging down to the middle of his back. That lumberman look was augmented by his wardrobe, the earth-brown jacket and earth-brown pants with millions of pockets up and down both legs. One pocket had a pair of pens clipped on.
Interesting thing about Jeff is, he's been with LA Opera since literally the beginning. While still a student at Cal Arts back in the spring of '86, he answered an ad for an internship with the then still-gestating LA Opera company. He recalled fondly working under the helmsmanship of Peter Hemmings, who ran the company until 2000. Speaking of pushing the envelope, Jeff's the guy who invented this thing called a gam torch. It's basically a kind of torch that's convenient for the stage because it's self-extinguishing. He got to use it to great effect back in the fall of 2004 for a production of the musical The Ten Commandments at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. I actually saw that and remembered being sort of wowed by all the torch work. It was quite a spectacle. I didn't even mind seeing none other than Val Kilmer (!) in the role of Moses. It wasn't a masterpiece just exactly, but it was certainly a solid night's entertainment. I think Entertainment Weekly gave it a D minus or something, which I thought was kind of harsh. Did Val kill their puppy or something? So anyway, that's another thing about Jeff. He doesn't just do opera stuff. In addition to the Kodak, he also does stuff for the Ahmanson Theatre, one of the theatres that shares the Music Center complex with the opera house downtown. Right now they're doing a production of Sweeney Todd, for which Jeff did the technical design.
To illustrate what he does for operas, Jeff chose the Recovered Voices production that was staged back in February. For two years now, ever since this guy James Conlon became the opera's principal conductor and music director, LA Opera has been putting on a production in the middle of the season that features short works by Jewish composers whose art was suppressed by the Nazi regime. This year's production featured a pair of one-act operas. The first was The Broken Jug by this guy Viktor Ullmann, who was killed in Auschwitz. It was adapted from a play by Heinrich von Kleist. The second short opera was The Dwarf by Viktor's mentor, Alexander Zemlinsky. The Dwarf was adapted from an Oscar Wilde short story called "Birthday for the Infanta." Alex didn't die during the Holocaust, but being Jewish 'n all, he obviously had to get out of Dodge when Hitler came to town. So he moved to New York City where he died lonely and depressed. I was fortunate enough to catch a performance on February 23rd.
The first thing Jeff talked about was the whole process of working with a set designer. They don't always use the same one, but they do have a general pool of talent from which they draw. For these two one-act operas they went to this guy in San Diego named Ralph Funicello. Ralph basically reads the libretto (a libretto is to an opera what a screenplay is to a movie) as well as the musical score, then he spends hours on Adobe Photoshop coming up with ideas for what the sets should look like. He and Jeff have a back-and-forth until they arrive at something decent. At that point the ball is in Jeff's court. It's his job to anatomize the set pieces, to figure out each and every single little element and piece and part that they'll need in order to bring it all together. The main reason he has to do that is to make sure they don't go over budget. Whereas Hollywood films tend to go over budget frequently, Jeff was emphatic that these operas rarely, if ever, go a single penny over budget. If that were to happen, a ripple effect would take place in that the remaining operas for that season would be short-changed. I get why they're tight-belted. They've gotta be. Not many people go see operas relative to Hollywood flicks, and like I said up top, with things like the Opera League, they sort of count on the public's generosity to keep the ship afloat.
Still, these budgets were much more than I thought they'd be. Up on stage behind Jeff, all these easels were set up to display Photoshop drawings as well as paintings and photographs of all the Recovered Voices set pieces in various stages of completion. In addition to that, though, you also had documents that detailed the budget. We're talking line by line budget breakdowns. Each Recovered Voices opera ended up costing about half a million, give or take, for the sets. Each, I said. Mind you, there were two operas for this production. And also mind you, that's a million spent on just the sets. So now think about all the set labor and all the singers and extras and the musicians and maestro James Conlon. The opera's total budget might actually rival that of a Hollywood film. Well okay, maybe one of the smaller indie films, but still.
The second reason Jeff pours over the set pieces, and this sort of ties into the whole budget thing, is to figure out which parts can be constructed in house and which parts will have to be farmed out to a scene shop. Inevitably a scene shop will be involved, but that doesn't mean they can't do their own work there. Jeff was very proud of the fact that there's nothing you'll find at Home Depot that you won't find in the opera house basement. They've got everything down there. The only difference is that their lumber is five-quarters wide instead of three-quarters because it usually has to be erected forty feet in the air on stage. Still, they always need a scene shop to help with certain scenic elements, and that's where the bidding process begins. No scene shops exist in Los Angeles. They typically accept bids from shops in San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. For Recovered Voices, the winning bidder was a shop they'd used before, RAB Productions in Portland. Not surprisingly, the winning bidder is usually the shop that can get it done for the lowest cost. Jeff awarded the order to RAB last October, and they had it done in three months flat. That's about as smooth as it could go, Jeff said. Now why wouldn't they have a scene shop in Los Angeles? According to Jeff, running a scene shop is perhaps the most thankless job imaginable, mainly because it's the furthest thing from a stable job. Scene shops rarely make a profit. In fact, if you break even, that's considered a great triumph. Still, Los Angeles has tons of theaters, more than New York. You'd think if there was one market that might be stable relative to other markets, it would be this one.
So anyway, when the scene shop is done, everything has to be shipped down to L.A. And I do mean ship in the literal sense. All the set pieces are loaded onto giant containers which are then put on a ship that sails to the Port of Los Angeles. Then they all get trucked to downtown. That's quite a drive if you want to look it up on Yahoo! Maps. Type in San Pedro as the starting point and then for the destination type in Grand Ave. and 1st St, Los Angeles. After all the stuff is unloaded at the opera house, these containers go sit in stacks of three in a shipping yard in Commerce. What made the Recovered Voices project a bit extra hairy was that it was being staged during the same month as two other operas: Tristan und Isolde and Otello. Since Recovered Voices was actually two operas, that meant they had no less than four operas to juggle over the same one-month period. That also meant that at any given time, there would be lots of set pieces sitting out behind the opera house, which you can easily see from the 1st street sidewalk. Jeff liked that he could show off so much of his stuff for the tourists. He was also proud of LA Opera for being able to coordinate all those productions. Even though it's par for this company's course, it makes the company unique. You take Broadway, for instance. Most plays on Broadway go for months at a time, so for each theater there isn't much in the way of multiple set pieces for multiple productions to worry about at all. That explains why LA Opera is looked at by companies at home and abroad as sort of a young buck demonstrating the new way things can be done. Seriously, LA Opera quite typically has, at any given point during the season, two or more operas in production at the same time. I've always known that, but now I'll be much more appreciative of the sheer amount of labor and timing and all that stuff that makes it go off without a hitch.
Besides ships, another way they've gotten set pieces is via 747. The most recent example is The Fly, a brand new opera they'll be putting on next year. And yes, if you're wondering, it will be adapted from the David Cronenberg movie from the eighties. A good bit of those sets came from a brand new opera house in Valencia, Spain. So all that stuff got loaded on not one but several 747s. And then when Jeff receives it, it all has to be adapted for the Dorothy Chandler stage. You see, the big difference between this building's stage and your average European opera stage is width and depth. The Dorothy Chandler is very wide, but it doesn't go back very far. Conversley, European opera houses are narrower but have more depth. By the way, in case you're wondering why they'd be worrying about The Fly when it's not due to go on stage until this September, that's actually the norm. For instance, Jeff and crew started work on Recovered Voices back in 2006.
Now you might wonder why LA Opera doesn't have a revolving stage or something. Well, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was built back in the sixties, and they still haven't taken the time to upgrade it. So for now they're just going to have to utilize all that outdoor real estate for storing extra stuff. Jeff doesn't sound like he's too eager for an upgrade. He told us that the Paris opera house not only has a revolving stage, but it has four levels of them. So that means they've got sixteen stages inside that one building. The only drawback, Jeff said, which would make him nervous if he worked there, is that if one stage doesn't move for whatever reason, or breaks down, then all the stages won't move.
Speaking of labor, the folks who get down and dirty with the set assembly are members of the International Alliance of Stage and Theater Employees (IASTE). Los Angeles is the home of Local 33, which has about 15,000 members. Jeff told us that about two dozen of them work for him on a consistent basis, but that number could easily go up during peak times. Having to stage four operas the same month would be a perfect example. Of course, all those extra workers don't really know ahead of time that their services might be needed. What they do is similar to what temps do. They have to call their Local every morning to see which theaters require their services.
Another example of when Jeff needed all the hands he could get was when they staged Macbeth a few years ago. Jeff said it was perhaps the most challenging opera he's had to do, and it had nothing to do with the opera itself. For this production they ordered a ton of scene elements from Tokyo. The ship was due to dock at San Francisco, where the stuff would be unloaded and sent down to L.A. by train. Only trouble was, San Francisco was in the throes of a dock workers strike, so the ship literally had to make a U-turn and go all the way back to Japan. Now you might think Jeff and team were S.O.L. Not so fast. Remember that virtual Home Depot in the basement? Well, now was the time when it came in handy and then some. They built all the sets down there from scratch. Jeff has fond memories of opening night when, even from outside in the Music Center plaza, you could smell the sawdust in the air.
After the talk, those of us who wished could go up on stage to look at all the drawings and sketches and budget spreadsheets and what have you. Jeff hung around and chatted with us, as did one of his underlings, this gal from Long Island named Lisa Stone. Lisa's official title is design manager. Jeff has three design managers working under him. Lisa handles all the brand new productions, such as the Recovered Voices project and next year's The Fly. The second design manager handles all the revivals, such as Mozart's Don Giovanni last December. And the third works full-time on the Ring Cycle.
Lisa's a cool cat. I got to talk to her quite a bit. In fact, she's the one who gave me all the concept designs from which I picked and chose a few to include with this post. She's kinda funny in that since moving out to L.A. back in 1992, she's gone out of her way to conceal her Long Island accent. When I was talking to her, I couldn't help notice the slight trace of an accent which I could've sworn was Italian. So at one point I was like, "So where are you from?" I was expecting her to name a country, but when all she said was "New York," I was like, "Ya know, I could've sworn you were Italian." She said she gets that all the time. It's just how she sounds as she camouflages her Long Islandishness. Besides going into more detail about all the work she has to do with the set designer, Lisa was quite candid about the layers of stress she has to work under. You work late nights, there's lots of shouting, people crying, the whole bit. Her most vivid memories seem to come from the operas directed by William Friedkin. If you haven't heard of him, he's primarly a movie director who burst onto the scene in the early seventies with The Exorcist. He's directed a bunch of operas over the years. One of the more recent ones would be the Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos in the fall of '04. According to Lisa, the first time he showed up to inspect the designs that had been drawn up, Billy (Lisa says they all call him Billy) fired the set designer on the spot after going on a tirade about how the designer didn't listen to anything he'd said. So of course then it fell to Lisa to find a new set designer and start all over again.
The first opera of the 2008-09 season will be Puccini's Il Trittico, which will reunite Billy with LA Opera. Il Trittico is actually three one-act operas shown back to back to back. Billy's taking the first two, and the third one will be directed by none other than Woody Allen. This'll be Woody's first time directing an opera. I asked Lisa what Woody's been like to work with. Her answer? Absentee. Dude hasn't been around at all but has given Jeff and team free reign to do what they need to do. At this point Jeff himself chimed in and told me that at the press conference a few months ago, when next season's line-up was announced, Woody was there and admitted point blank that he doesn't have a clue how to direct an opera. "He'll fake it," Lisa said.
