Tonight was the All Star Game, an event as alien to most opera goers as a production of Wagner is to most baseball fans. It was also time for dress rehearsal, but I’ll get to that (and the game) in a little bit. Today was also a lighting day, and that means a marathon run-through of all the lighting cues in the operas. The singers and the orchestra don’t need to be present until the dress rehearsal, but the artistic directors and stage manager get to walk through each and every cue to make sure that the instruments are properly set. It is a thankless and time-consuming task, but it must be done. Supernumeraries are called upon to stand on the spots where the singers will be, and position, intensity, and color are all checked to ensure that once the singers mount the stage, they are properly lit.

I find the use of the word “instrument” interesting. The light is called an instrument, and the device used to measure the light’s color and intensity is also called an instrument. The members of the orchestra all play instruments, and the singers refer to their voices as their instruments. Actor’s and dancer’s bodies are their instruments. And the audience uses financial instruments to purchase admission to a performance. I wonder why we don’t just call them "thingies", or "doohickeys", or some other universally acceptable mumble-word. Why “instrument”? At least the conductor wields a baton... But I digress.

Because there is no orchestra, no singers, and really not much of anything going on, I was able to get some interesting pictures. I’d like to share them with you, and that is the real reason for this entry. These are views that you’ll never see as an audience member, but which are familiar to cast and crew.

The first picture above is the view of the stage from the back of the house. You can see the directors and their computer screens, preparing the check the lighting cues at the start of the next scene. As with all the pictures in this blog, click on them to get a larger view.

Following this is a view from the front of the stage. You can see the orchestra pit below, and during the performance, the conductor would be standing on the podium in the center. Of course, during a performance, the singers wouldn’t see a view that is anything like this. They would see the conductor, but everything else would be black against the glare of the lights on stage and the spotlights that you can see lining the balcony. When you perform on stage, usually the only way you know that there is an audience in the house is when they applaud. You can’t see a thing beyond the proscenium except perhaps the exit lights and the lamps illuminating the aisles and stairs. Singers and actors who make eye contact with the audience are good at imagining an audience.

The next photograph is from fully upstage. This is where you get to see the mechanics behind the magic. No one but the actors and crew ever see the back side of the props and sets, so they don’t need to be particularly fancy – they just need to be practical and structurally sound, so as unimaginative as cross-braces may be, they are there for a reason. They allow the imaginative parts of the set to remain upright, so that the audience can fall headlong into the story on stage (instead of the props on stage falling headlong into the audience).

The next photograph is the stage as seen from the pit. This is close to the view that the conductor will see (his place is a bit to the right of where I shot this picture). However, in general it is only the conductor who will see this view, because every member of the orchestra is watching him, and not the stage. The photograph after that is what the orchestra members will see – the other musicians, the conductor on his illuminated podium, and behind all of that, the darkened house with its unseen but sometimes heard audience.

But I also learned a disturbing fact today. I discovered that singers and crew must suffer for their craft. It is not the long hours, but it is rather privation of which I speak. And not the personal suffering we saw in the garrets and unheated tenements in Rent or Moulin Rouge, but privation within the very theatre in which the company is to perform!

Perhaps you were wondering how I’d get back to the ball game, so here it is at last. It seems that the All Star teams are being fêted in the Byham’s lobby this afternoon and evening, and amidst much pomp and circumstance are to be driven in their limos the two or three blocks to the stadium, with the assembled faithful watching the parade. It strikes me as odd that President Clinton walked a number of blocks in the January chill to his inauguration, and that Queen Elizabeth braves London weather and crowds in an open coach, yet these athletes need an air-conditioned limousine to transit a trivial distance to what purports to be an All Star athletic competition!

But because the events seems to demand it, here the millionaire ball players are being given a free lunch in the Byham lobby (as if being chosen to play wasn’t honor enough for them to pay for their own meal). And as a consequence, the entire cast and crew of the Ring are barred from the lobby of their own theatre.

Call me an idealist, but wouldn’t it have been nicer if the ball players were banned from the stadium while singers and musicians got to practice in the open air? Click on the "Comments" link below and let me know what you think.