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I don’t get to the opera often. Frankly, it seems a little daunting—expensive and long!
But when I do go, I remember how much I enjoy it and vow to come back more often.
The Metropolitan Opera has done some wonderful, creative things recently to make their performances more accessible to the public.
This week, I got a first hand look at what goes into making the Opera House run with an exclusive behind the scenes tour led by our dear friend Michael Stinchcomb. He is a huge opera fan who has been doing hair for some opera greats including Renee Fleming.
It is an incredible, impressive operation.
The tour is a real insider view—we went backstage and saw the stagehands moving a set and preparing for the evening’s performance. We saw the costumes and the wigs being made, we got to go into a dressing room used by Renee Fleming and see how the props and sets are made.
There are over 1,000 people who work for the Met including 300 solo artists, 100 orchestra members and 16 ballet members. On top of that, there are crews building sets, designing costumes, doing lighting—there’s even a full time nurse on staff.
The Met has a huge schedule—sometimes 4 different operas in one week, so it takes almost the entire day to change over a set. It’s not like a Broadway show where the set is built and stays there for months or years. It was so impressive to stand on the stage and see how enormous it is and how much work goes into getting the sets ready.
The tour that I took was for patrons only, but there are more accessible Backstage tours.
The Metropolitan Opera Guild Backstage Tours are held during the Met performance season at 3:00 pm on weekdays and Sundays at 10:30 am and 1:30 pm. Tours are not held on days of final dress rehearsals, or other special events in the opera house.
