Backstage at the Washington Opera

Lynne Price and her friend Alain Letort gave us tickets to this Saturday event. Many thanks to both of you. It was fun.

Those of you in the TWC will recognize tenor Richard Seide on the right.

Our tour guide was Beth Krynicki, the stage manager who did Le Cid, I Puritani, and Julius Caesar this season. The description of her job was awesome. Aside from attending all of the staging rehearsals, she stands by a station just off stage and monitors the entire production, with earphone contact with all the principle backstage personnel. Here, she describes some of the props they use, which look so realistic from the audience, but are generally made of paper mache. Finally, we went onstage, and to the right, looked up at the beautiful chandelier, and down into the orchestra pit, which looked considerably bigger than from first tier seats.

Elaine and I were delighted to see the set from the third act of Tosca, which we had seen the previous Thursday. I suggested that the poor chaps hanging from the top were suternumeraries that drew the short straws, but we were assured they were dummies. This complicated mechanism was apparently supposed to hoist the poor hanging figures above. It was really made of old wood and looked quite impressive.

This is the stairway Tosca runs up at the end when she notices that her lover is dead and leaps from the V shaped parapet to her death. I sneaked back and photographed the blue double mattress on which she landed, (below) and was reprimanded for not staying with the group.

Elaine on stairs Elaine and Richard And Marv

Just two more statues before finishing this page. I had read that in this production, a statue of Mary Magdalene opened the opera instead of a painting. Here it is backstage from the back.

And on the way home, we drove by the Washington Monument, which is half revealed in the removal of the scaffolding. Those are cherry blossoms at it's base. Sorry for the black: Taken from the car.