Backstage at the Met

Most Americans, forever fascinated by the backstage know-how of the movies,TV, the theater or the circus, know little about how an opera is staged. It is actually an extraordinary exercise in skill, timing and logistics, far more involved than play production. Many opera plots include supernatural happenings and require complicated equipment; what is more, everything from magic fireworks to the basso's whiskers must move according to the music. Technically, one of the most demanding operas is Gounod's Faust, which opened the Metropolitan Opera in 1883. Last week Faust had its 317th Met performance, a matinee.

The Met is an old and barely adequate house. What it lacks in convenience it must make up with backstage savvy, proudly displayed by a crew of 152 electricians, carpenters ("grips"), prop men, et al. Best place from which to watch them at work is 44 feet above the stage, in the gloom of a narrow fly gallery. There, about lunchtime, Electrician Charlie Suhren started setting the lights for the first scene. As soon as his job was done, Charlie retired to a remote eyrie high in the cathedral vault of the stage, where he played solitaire until it was time to reset the lights for the next scene.

12 Noon. Almost all the cast and chorus are in the house, scattered through four floors of dressing rooms, getting into costumes, making up, vocalizing.

12:30. Carpenters and stagehands check in. Others have already hung all the drops (painted linen) in proper order, ready to be lifted or lowered. The newcomers go to work on the first-scene set, Faust's study.

12:45. Executive Production Manager David Pardoll adjusts a carnation in his lapel, leaves his tiny first-floor office and goes to his regular post in the wings.

12:50. The setting for Faust's gloomy study is in place. Books are piled on the desk and a large armchair has been carefully placed so that it screens an open trapdoor from the view of the audience.

12:52. A short, stooped man carrying a vocal score sits down quietly beside Pardoll. His name is Antonio Dell'Orefice, and he is one of the Met's seven "maestros"--unobtrusive musicians of clerklike appearance whose job it is to follow the score and cue curtains, entrances, exits.

12:55. Master Mechanic Louis Edson looks over the stage set and okays it. General Manager Rudolf Bing marches purposefully across the stage but speaks to no one. Faust (Tenor Thomas Hayward) steps out of the elevator from his third-floor dressing room, looking uncomfortable in his heavy overcoat and old-man's false forehead and wig. Chief Electrician Rudolph Kutner checks with his assistant, stationed at a control panel in the hooded apron box next to the prompter's box.

12:57. Faust checks his props, takes his seat by the fireplace, opens a book on his lap. Backstage voices are hushed. In the darkness behind the study, the set for Scene 2 is all ready to be pulled into place: three sideshow stalls, a circular bandstand, the entrance to the Bacchus Inn. The chorus files in and Chorus Master Walter Taussig mounts a stepladder that is steadied by a stagehand. When he reaches eye level with a small hole in the canvas sidewall of Faust's study--through which he will be able to watch the conductor--Taussig opens his score, focuses a battery light on it and waits.

12:58.30. Pardoll sends Conductor Kurt Adler into the pit.

12:59. Pardoll signals for the house lights to be turned down. A stagehand grips the rope triggering the hydraulic mechanism that controls the curtain. Other stagehands are standing immobile in the wings. It is very quiet and cool. The opera is poised for flight.

1:00. Pardoll says: "Ready, everyone." The stooped maestro in the wings slides back a small panel and looks out at Conductor Adler. Adler starts the prelude. Four minutes later the maestro murmurs, "Ready!", then gestures abruptly. The stagehand bends his back to the curtain rope, and the heavy, golden brocade parts, rises majestically.

1:05. Faust sings of his despair. When he sees the coming of daylight, he closes the shutters. The pale sunbeams (supplied by a spot high up on Suhren's fly gallery) disappear. He threatens to kill himself, but--as Chorus Master Taussig on his stepladder gives the beat--women's voices offstage urge Faust to live.

1:08. In the basement, directly below Faust's vocal soul-struggles, Mephistopheles (Basso Nicola Moscona) paces nervously, dressed in evening clothes, redlined Inverness cape, with top hat and cane. Three grips stand ready at the trapdoor platform. Another maestro, with a score on his lap, sits near by. Mephistopheles clears his throat, begins la-la-la softly. The maestro, straining to hear the orchestra, says, "Ready!" and Mephisto steps onto the platform.

1:13. Faust sings, "A moi, Satan, `a moi!" and throws his book into the fireplace. An electrician switches on a fan, which sends flame-colored paper streamers upward into sight of the audience. The basement maestro makes an abrupt pronouncement: "Up with him!" The stagehands lift the platform and Mephisto into the air. The audience first sees him sitting on the arm of the chair that screens the trapdoor, nonchalantly swinging his foot and cane. Meanwhile, behind the rear study wall. Marguerite (Soprano Nadine Conner) is climbing a narrow set of stairs to a platform, aided by a stagehand.

1:19. Mephisto flourishes his cane. Behind the scenery, backstage spots begin to glow, lighting Singer Conner; as a result, Faust and the audience see the vision of Marguerite through a scrimmed hole in the middle of Faust's bookcase. Faust, enraptured, signs away his soul to the Devil, drinks the potion to restore his youth. While Mephisto struts about flashing his cape to distract the audience, Faust rips off his old-man disguise and springs forward as a young man.

1:22. Curtain comes swiftly down and stagehands swarm on to strike the study set. Flats are restacked swiftly for transfer to trucks waiting back of the stage on Seventh Avenue, ready to take them to the warehouse (there is not enough room at the Met to store all the scenery). Choristers and dancers pour out from the wings to take their places in the Kermesse set for Scene 2. Gay carnival lanterns, already lighted, are strung across the stage. More than 170 people are moving about in seeming confusion.

1:24.30. Pardoll says, "Places, everyone." In the instant before curtain time the cast comes to Faustian life: a hand is raised in the beginning of a greeting, a head thrown back and a wine beaker tipped to the mouth; a pair of dancers in the wings are "on the mark" for a madcap dash across the stage; a girl on a ladder reaches up for a lantern.

1:25. Pardoll looks out at Conductor Adler, flips a switch and a small blue light goes on in the orchestra pit. Music. The curtain rises on "students, burghers, soldiers, maidens and matrons" three minutes after it fell on Faust's study. The performance moves on through the carnival scene, the garden scene (a rubberized pool, rocks and lilies), the church, the public square (a tricky set with two flights of stairs). As the sets are changed, everyone backstage talks in normal tones, knowing that the thick silk-and-linen curtain deadens the noise. Pardoll urges everyone to keep an eye out for loose tacks. Even so, Met dancers are resigned to at least one pierced foot per season.

3:57. The last scene is under way. Marguerite, languishing in prison, calls on the angels to save her. The chorus, already in street clothes, is massed in the wings.

4:07. Marguerite dies far out on the apron, and Mephisto pronounces her damned forever. Offstage, the angel chorus contradicts him. Marguerite is saved. She rises, turns, a scrim comes down slowly and the prison walls vanish upward. Master Mechanic Edson cautions: "Ready, boys." Half a dozen stagehands stare at a glowing red bulb, and when the light flicks off, they pull their ropes like bell ringers. Pearl-grey drops rise as the pearly gates open before Marguerite. The sighs and stirrings of the audience can be heard through Gounod's music.

4:09. The great gold curtain comes down with a sound like a chorus of schoolgirls whispering secrets.

4:10. Pardoll shepherds the principals through their curtain calls. Meanwhile, all the colored lights die, the harsh work lights come on and the last drop is flown. The great stage is once more an ugly warehouse. The maestros put away their scores and go out to eat. Charlie Suhren puts away his cards and climbs up to the fly gallery to change the colors on his spotlights. Production Manager Pardoll deposits his carnation in a glass of water.

Before the last star has changed to street clothes, the first scene is being set for the night's performance (Aida).

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