For those of you not familiar with dress rehearsals, they are the pits.
Usually, you have been up all the night before, fixing the problems that showed up in fittings that day, or completely rebuilding something the director decided wasn’t working. Getting everyone into their costumes, all at the same time, was like trying to put a whole herd of octopus (octopusses?) into three-piece suits … with ties. Usually, dress rehearsals culminated in big piles of alterations, “things” that had to be rushed out and found, and laundry, always laundry.
Fortunately, in Baltimore, where the opera performances I worked on took place, there was a whole platoon of people whose job it was to help get the production through dress rehearsal.
As I said last column, my job was to fly out to Baltimore, do the final fittings of the pieces I had made and sent, run the costumes through the dress rehearsals and then get all gussied up and attend opening night. My friend, John Lehmeyer, the director, would spend the entire opening night pacing back and forth the length of the lobby, getting his clues about how the performance was going by listening to the noises the audience was making. Then we’d go and squash down our anxiety with food until the reviews came in.
But working in Baltimore was not all champagne and Bertha’s mussels. Any construction or alterations were done at Jones’ costume house, on Howard (pronounced Haird) Street, where the people were wonderfully friendly, but the conditions were 18th century. The walls of the three-story ancient warehouse were single-layer brick. Winters were finger-numbing and summers were covered in sweat. The industrial sewing machines we used were way older than me and only sewed forward. But, picture the magic of being surrounded by Traviata ballgowns and Orioles mascots bird heads. Over there were authentic suits of armor, complete with mace, flail and longsword. Madam Butterfly silk kimonos, Renaissance uniforms and every Halloween costume of every character you ever wanted to be. Not one square inch that wasn’t occupied by a costume that could change your persona into someone else. Yes, magic!
The performances took place in the very old (1894) Lyric Opera House, which had started life as a music hall, featuring the Victorian songbird, Nellie Melba. The first few years I worked there, the old main-level private boxes with their heavy, fringed draperies, were still there. It took a while before someone finally told me about the night watchman who had been “done in” in one of the boxes and still appeared there, now and then. They said you could smell his cigar as he took his break in “his” box.
The theater dressing rooms were not exactly star quality and were down a level from the stage. There were matching, curved staircases, one on either side of the wings, leading to them, and I spent rehearsals racing up and down the stairs from one level to another. Until I was stopped short by a small, wizzled-up man with a huge air of authority bellowing at me, “Hey! Hey, you, girly!” He stomped over to me, as I wondered what I had done, now, and very gently removed the scissors that I always wore on a ribbon around my neck, handed them to me and said “Slow down, Huun.”
My main job, while I was working the rehearsals, was to stand next to the director, and take notes about anything having to do with costumes, that he was unhappy about. That trip, the Baltimore Opera was doing “Kismet” and the costumes were truly over-the-top. The main set piece was a 20-foot-tall, rotating Pike’s Peak of a mountain with stairways leading up and down, surrounded by a circular scrim fabric that could be lit so that the mountain appeared and disappeared. The 30-person chorus was arranged on the stairs, wearing the long robes and the very odd headpieces I had made from John’s sketches. They were hard skull caps supporting large, upstanding flashlights that shown off the tops of their heads, lighting the scrim from the inside. John, the director, turned to me and said, “I hate those headpieces. Take them off.” I said “Okey” and wrote in my notebook. Silence. “No, take them off now!” “What! Now!?” I squeaked. “Go!” he said. So, up on the stage I went, wrestled with the scrim and started climbing the stairways. The chorus was singing to lung capacity, as I snatched each person’s headpiece off and tossed them down. Some of the singers objected and tried to hang onto their headlamps with both hands. Others were angry about this deranged woman climbing all over their set and were hissing at me, “Get outta here!” I got back to my seat and John turned to me with a big-eyed look and said “Now what are we going to put on their heads?” Huh! I for sure knew who “we” was going to be.
Another trip, John was doing costumes and directing “Martha” for New York City Opera and we took the train from Baltimore to the Garment District in New York City to “shop the show.” After being on the train for that long, I needed to use a restroom, so, as we were hurrying through Grand Central Station, I started to veer off to the right, where it said “ladies,” only to find myself jerked up short with an “Oh no you don’t!”
“Uh uh, people have gotten kidnapped from that bathroom and I’m not losing you, now!” “But, but.”
“You’ll just have to hold it!”
Next time: “A Jock I’m Not”
Claudia Myers is a former costume designer for The Baltimore Opera, Minnesota Ballet and has taught design and construction at the College of St. Scholastica. She is a national award-winning quilter, author and a local antique dealer, specializing in Persian rugs.