Behind the scenes at La Bohème
NEW YORK — Mimis come and Rodolfos go, but one thing never changes in La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera: When the curtain goes up on Act 2, the audience always applauds.
Act 1 of Puccini’s opera is set in a garret amid the rooftops of Paris where four young bohemians live in poverty. When it’s over, the curtain descends and the audience stays in its seats. A mere five minutes or so later, thanks to the ingenious stagecraft of Franco Zeffirelli, the curtain rises again on a twotiered street scene crowded with a café, vendor carts, stone staircase and house fronts, and teeming with 195 choristers, and children celebrating Christmas Eve.
“The audience always gives the stage crew a hand,” said Stephen A. Diaz, the Met’s master carpenter. “It’s one of the few shows where they do that.”
There’s a secret to the rapid scene change that the audience never guesses: The second- act set is put together onstage long before the opera begins.
“We do it backward — Act 2 first, then Act 1,” said Diaz, who was overseeing backstage work before a performance last week, as about 50 carpenters, electricians and painters buzzed about the set.
The reverse order is necessary, Diaz explained, so that lighting cues for the street scene can be tested ahead of time. “They need 12 minutes of focus so it can just come out and be ready to go,” he said.
About 15 minutes before show time, Act 2 disappears. The front of the café slides off to stage right on a rolling platform called a “wagon,” the houses are pushed back, and a grey gauze scrim representing the sky comes down to hide the rear half of the set. Then the garret arrives on another wagon from stage left and the music begins.
The process is reversed between acts, but this time when the café set slides in from the side, it’s crowded with people, and the “sky” is pulled up out of sight so the whole street scene is visible.
Building and rebuilding
Most Met productions are built to last 20- 25 years, but this one is going strong 37 years after its debut in 1981.
Diaz, now in his 46th season, worked with Zeffirelli when he designed the sets.
“It’s magical. He took the building itself, and he took all its wagons and used everything to its fullest extent. The amazing thing is he has the biggest shows and they’re the easiest to work. Because he did the figuring out for us.”
Asked by The New York Times how he thought the public would react if he brought in a new version, Met general manager Peter Gelb replied: “I’m not going to find out.”
“We have done a face- lift to basically every piece of scenery,” Diaz said. “Starting in about 1991 we fixed the garret, then the café ... We do it a little at a time. Now it’s completely done over and we’re going around again.”