And now for my second Opera League post in ten days. I'm on an operatic role! Seriously, this was a nice little event the League put on at the Dorothy Chandler earlier this evening. And it was quite an honor. Check it out. We got a literal backstage tour. For the first time since I started going to operas here almost ten years ago, I got to stand in the middle of the stage. The League had a Backstage Magic seminar last year (my first year as a member), but it was only backstage in a figurative sense. Check out the post from last April. It was a great event, don't get me wrong, but it was basically sitting up in the second-level lobby and listening to one of their top technical guys give a lecture about the complexities of multiple sets for multiple productions at the same time. That was cool, and they even let me take home some of their concept sketches, which I scanned and included in my post. Do check it out. Tonight, though, while it didn't go into as much depth about the behind the scenes, was still pretty special. League president Dorothy Wait told us that it was the first time the opera company had ever let the League do something like this.
Because they wanted to make the backstage tours as fun and informative as possible, the League did what they normally don't do and put a tight limit on the number of people who could attend, so you had to RSVP fast. The cool thing was that it was free, unlike the lecture nine days ago, which cost a few ducats.
When I got there tonight, I was told I was in the second group. That meant I and the rest of the second group would first nibble at the little buffet in the side lobby outside the doors leading to the left side of the auditorium. That was cool, I'd never seen the lobby dressed up like that before. Meanwhile, the first group would be taken on the stage tour. And then they'd come out to eat and the second group would head in for the tour.
Like last year, the food was pretty great. I think Patina does the catering, but I'm not sure. They own a bunch of pricey restaurants. Also like last year, the bar had wine and water but no beer. I'm pretty much a beer guy, but if wine's the only alcohol available, I'll partake just a little. I have to be careful because my system isn't really used to it. That Pinot Noir is something potent! The buffet was Mediterranean snacks, various dips and breads and crackers and olives and cheeses and what have you. Not enough for a meal, but tasty nonetheless.
I came alone tonight, which sort of made me self-conscious, but then I felt even more so when I saw that no one else there was within, oh, twenty or thirty years of my age. I'm thirty-two, and I'd say the next oldest person was in their fifties. I'm being generous. The vast majority of the attendees were in their golden years. I mean come on, I see plenty of folks my age and younger at the operas themselves. Don't any of them join the League? To be fair, this was at 6pm on a weeknight. I had to get to work early so I could leave early enough to catch the subway and get downtown on time. Most people don't live downtown. I'm sure not everyone can do that. Plus, I have no family to worry about. Okay enough about me. Back to the show...
For the first hour I stood at the lone vacant high table to eat and drink and feel self-conscious while reading the rest of the program from Die Walküre, which I just saw on Sunday. Yes, I do take the time to read the programs, thank you very much. Hey, they're pretty informative, and when it comes to opera, with which I'm still a novice, I read as much as I can. I also got to talk to this one red-headed elderly woman who used to go to operas all the time and then had to stop for many years, for about as long as I've been going, to take care of her ailing husband. She's only just getting back into it now. She was fascinated as hell that a thirtysomething guy would come to something like this on a school night. Anyway, at around seven or so, the first group finished up and came out to eat while my group was invited into the auditorium.
My group had maybe, I dunno, twenty or thirty people? Not too bad. We all sat scattered around the first three rows while Dorothy Wait gave her spiel about what a big deal it was that we were allowed to do this while LA Opera is currently staging two pretty huge productions at the same time: Die Walküre and The Birds. The former, as you might know from some of my recent posts, is part of LA Opera's first-ever attempt to tackle Wagner's Ring Cycle. You'd think that would be enough, but no. You've also got The Birds, which is part of Music Director James Conlon's annual Recovered Voices project, one of the topics of the last League event.
After her spiel, Dorothy passed us off to the woman who'd be our tour guide for the next hour or so: Lyla Forlani. She's a pretty cool gal, petite, short black hair, and very high energy. You can tell by her voice that she's always on the go. I guess she'd have to be, huh? As the Production Stage Manager for one of the biggest opera companies on the planet, Lyla's the one who basically captains the ol' ship backstage during each and every production. What's more, according to her, there's sort of an unspoken rule that stage managers aren't allowed to get sick.
Lyla's a thirty-five-year-old alumna of Indiana University, where her original aspiration was to play bassoon. The more she studied music, though, the more she developed an interest in the administrative side of things. After graduating in the mid nineties or so, she landed backstage gopher gigs and climbed the ladder at opera companies such as Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, La Jolla, and a bunch more. She must not have lasted long at any of those places. Or maybe they were internships or something. At any rate, she landed at LA Opera in 1999, only four years out of college, and she's been here ever since.
Lyla's tour was in three general chunks: The stage itself, just behind and beneath the stage, and finally her home base computer console over to the side of the stage. As I said above, being on that stage was a real breath-taking experience, especially after having just seen Die Walküre a couple days ago. Words just don't describe it, but I can still describe what I did. I stood dead center on the stage, and I walked as far down the rake as Lyla would allow. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. For Die Walküre, director Achim Freyer is using a thirteen-degree rake. Do you know what a rake is in the theatrical sense? It's an inclined platform that takes up pretty much the entire stage. When I saw Die Walküre, all of the action took place on the rake. It's huge. Lyla said it was thirteen degrees. If that means steep, then there you go. It was pretty steep. Plus, that scrim was still there where the curtain usually is. Achim Freyer takes terrific advantage of it. During the flight of the Valkyrie sequence, for example, the scrim really does make it look like the Valkyrie are soaring through the sky. Pretty awesome.
When I was standing on the rake, I noticed that it was actually two separate platforms. You had this little one in the middle, which would rotate on its own, and then you had the huge one along the outside. Lyla said that if it felt like a surface your ankles would get tired on, you weren't alone. LA Opera brings in a physical therapist to help the singers adapt to standing on the rake for umpteen hours at a time.
Now why is the rake so steep? First and foremost, it's what Achim Freyer wants, and he's not someone you argue with. Also, it affords the singers a view of people upstage as well as of the audience and the conductor. Now the rake isn't uniformly steep. It's got these little flat places where the singers can stand comfortably for particularly long arias. Like, say, arias that last forty-five minutes. Yes, the Ring's got those. And by the way, the reason she wouldn't let us walk too far down the rake is because it extends over the orchestra pit. If you fall off...
I asked about the computers controlling the rake, like how many computers were required. She said that was a complicated question. There's one computer, but it's less of a computer and more of a console. She went on about how the computer(s) controlled the lights, and how the video could sometimes look too dark for Achim Freyer since he was reviewing the production from out of town. The current production of The Birds, which I'm seeing this Saturday, comes down on top of the rake.
Do the actors have to prepare for performing on a rake? Abso-frickin'-lutely. Except, that is, for Placido Domingo, LA Opera's General Director and who plays Siegmund in the current production of Die Walküre. Despite him being sixty-eight, he only needed two weeks of rehearsal to get it down pat, including this one part where he spins. Then again, he's played this role millions of times, including at the Met a few years ago, where I saw him. The other singers need at least three weeks to get used to the rake, Lyla said.
While I was up there, I got to check out a lot of the costumes. I actually got to touch the costume for Fricka, one of the goddesses from the Ring Cycle. I also got to check out those little fire costumes from the very end of Die Walküre. Best of all was my up close and personal view of those giant hands from the first Ring opera, Das Rheingold, which were supposed to belong to Fafner and Fasolt. They were suspended in the wings. And then you had that giant Wotan costume from Das Rheingold for the scene when he descends to Nibelheim. Lyla also pointed out the tresses up above that were used for the flying scenes, like the one at the end of Das Rheingold. It's all done manually, she said.
Lyla borrowed some guy's little pen flashlight for the under-stage tour. The most notable characteristic of the stage's underbelly are the hydraulic lifts. Lyla said that the Ring Cycle demands over a hundred stagehands, a good many of whom work the hydraulics. You've got these thick yellow tubes that pipe in liquid nitrogen for the smoke effects. She talked about how they used to create smoke with other chemicals that would end up hurting the singers' throats until the singers union told LA Opera to knock it off. In fact, LA Opera got in so much trouble that they were forbidden from using smoke effects altogether for five years. Lyla said any lighting designer's face would fall if you told them they couldn't use faux smoke for lighting effects.
Console is pretty much the right word for where she spends the majority of each production. It's a mounted PC that requires her to stand the entire time. And she wears a headset so she can communicate with whomever she wants to at any given time. The monitor lets her see everything. And I do mean everything. LA Opera has cameras everywhere, judging by the way she was talking about it. To heck with Big Brother. Lyla's the Big Sister of this joint. Speaking of which, when she was talking about the ubiquitous cameras, she mentioned that the Dorothy Chandler stands ninety-six feet high, a good nine or ten stories.
Remember how I said up top that stage managers aren't supposed to get sick? That's because stage managers don't have understudies. If Lyla's incapacitated in some way, the production's pretty much screwed. I cannot imagine living with that kind of pressure, but that's just me. She told us a story about this one guy who's stage manager for a nearby theater. He was in the hospital for something pretty serious one time. Even though he was supposed to stay overnight, he checked himself out at five-thirty p.m. for a seven p.m. performance.
Lyla can't imagine being a stage manager without her musician's background. Everything is communicated to and from her staff with musical cues. During one opera, the lighting tech told her he needed something done at a certain point during a forty-five-second (i.e. two-page) song, but he wasn't sure how to convey what he wanted in musical terms, so she told him whatever he wanted was out of the question simply because he didn't know how to ask. Damn.
And that's that, folks. Like I said, it was a pleasant evening that afforded me a glimpse into a world most people never get to see. Shit, most people don't see operas at all, let alone backstage. Speaking of which, on my way out of the Chandler I passed by the dressing rooms of two of the stars of Die Walküre. First was the door with the name Linda Watson on it. She's the American soprano playing Brünnhilde. She's also a big international opera star. It was weird being right outside the room where she chills out when she's not on. And then you've got the guy playing her dad Wotan, god of gods: Vitalij Kowaljow, a bass from Ukraine. No, I didn't actually get to look inside their dressing rooms. Maybe they'll let us do that next year.
