Getting behind the scenes, going backstage, enjoying an inside view-these phrases suggest our delight at glimpsing the inner workings of show business. Opera is proverbially the most elaborate biz of all-and for three weekends this winter you can be privy to the intricate, usually off-limits operations of Lyric Opera of Chicago as it ends its 1989-90 season.
Sponsored by the Florsheim Shoe Company and starting this Sunday, the popular backstage walking tours offered by the Lyric Opera Guild Board of Directors will travel through the 60-year-old Civic Opera House, giving a look at the real magic behind the splendid illusions of grand opera.
Moving through four floors, ranging from the catwalk above the stage to the basement and the trap doors beneath it and covering everything but the Phantom himself, the two-hour tour is catnip for opera buffs. According to Dr. Willard Fessenden Jr., president of thethe Lyric Opera Guild Board of Directors, it also furnishes proof that opera is much more than the sum of its parts-the contributions of its wardrobe, scenery, lighting and costume departments-and that ”it`s just as functional and efficient as it is glamorous.”
When you see an ordinary dagger and then learn that Renata Tebaldi, who used it to repeatedly kill Baron Scarpia in ”Tosca,” wanted it heavily weighted so it would crash to the floor with a frightening thud, you realize just how material is the make-believe that is opera`s stock-in-trade.
The excursion originates on the stage of the adjoining Civic Theatre (an exact miniature of the opera house), where a lunch and cash bar are available before or after the tour and a short slide show helps to set the scene. Throughout each session, some 20 to 25 tours of about 20 people each will depart every 8 minutes to explore the vast labyrinth that Lyric artistic director Ardis Krainik calls an ”operatic jigsaw puzzle.” To help put the puzzle together, at each stop experts will offer lecture-demonstrations in their field.
The first stop is at the top, in the seventh-floor costume rooms, where the elaborate, exotic and often delicate garments used in each season`s eight operas are laundered, stored, altered and repaired by the busy wardrobe department. (Many contain extra material to make them easier to take in or let out.) Here costumes used in rehearsal or performance or that have yet to be returned to storage are separated by racks according to opera. They are further divided into those worn by the principals and the by chorus.
From this room the costumes are wheeled down to the various dressing rooms. In an adjoining workroom you see where costumes are made, tailored and fitted for everyone from the spear-carrying supernumeraries to the celebrated divas.
Descending to the sixth floor, the tour crosses the awesome catwalk that stretches five floors over the stage and reveals the soaring fly space. At 14 stories the Civic Opera House is the tallest opera theater in the world and looks it.
At the other side of the catwalk is the properties storeroom, which one visitor called the ”greatest grandmother`s attic in the world.” There`s row after row of all the hand and stage props that Lyric owns, including a virtual produce market in waxed fruit and such fascinating objects as Pagageno`s birdcage in ”The Magic Flute,” the head of John the Baptist that Strauss`
Salome lusts after (it sits forlornly on a dusty upper shelf) and the grinning skeletons used in ”Don Giovanni.”
Adding to the attic effect are scads of stock props, tables and chairs from every historical period. (The gigantic props, like the huge statues in
”Aida” and ”Don Carlo,” are moved to Lyric`s warehouse at 26th and Dearborn Streets when they`re not in use.)
Moving right along, visitors encounter a display of objects from the fifth-floor armory, the repository where death-dealing operatic weaponry-vintage guns, swords, daggers and halberds, many from Mary Garden`s old Chicago opera company-are assembled. Along with a nearly historical collection of antique guns are the trick weapons, like the all-purpose daggers with retractable blades that so many grand finales require. Here, for example, is the breakaway sword that Valentin uses when dueling with Faust.
The tour moves to the fourth floor through a corridor that`s part of the 20 N. Wacker Drive office building, itself an integral part of the opera house. (The original owner, Samuel Insull, hoped that the rent from the offices would underwrite the costs of opera.) The fourth floor holds the capacious chorus dressing rooms (each with a useful microwave oven), and here two members of the chorus will explain how much hard work goes into their musical achievements. (In March they start two to three rehearsals a week; by Labor Day they must learn by rote every note for all eight operas.)
The fourth-floor attraction is the extensive wig and makeup department, where wigs from current operas are displayed, many made of human hair. Particularly interesting is the 4-foot-long, flower-bedecked wig that Ruth Welting will wear as Ophelia, one of three she will sport in Ambroise Thomas` ”Hamlet.”
The tour`s grand finale takes opera pilgrims to the dressing rooms of the stars and to the stage itself. There a member of the lighting department will explain the computerized system and elaborate lighting cues. Visitors will see how the stage is raised by hydraulic lift and glimpse pieces of scenery from current productions and the closed-circuit monitors that allow the singers to see the conductor from all angles.
Above all, you get to trod the to-some-sacred stage graced by the likes of Tebaldi, Callas, Sutherland, Te Kanawa and, not often enough, Pavarotti. The view of the enormous house with its gleaming, teeth-like balconies shows you why in Italy they call it ”looking into the mouth of the wolf.” It`s a sight that once made Mary Martin exclaim, ”Why, it`s bigger than Texas!” And here, according to Fessenden, a tour guide since 1973, members of the tour suddenly start to ham it up and turn into instant Carusos.
In retrospect, all the complex machinery that the tour reveals is so varied that, according to Fessenden, ”Even after you`ve taken it in it`s hard to put it together-this place is such an awesome maze.” Putting together Krainik`s puzzle is clearly more than any one afternoon can accomplish.
What: Lyric Opera backstage tours
When: Two-hour tours 1-4 p.m. Sundays through Feb. 4 (except Jan. 21) and 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Jan. 27.
Where: Enter at Civic Theatre stagedoor, 20 N. Wacker Dr.
How much: $12.50 ($7.50 additional for lunch); reservations required, call 332-2244, ext. 222.
