Is it a crime to love an easy-to-love opera?

The San Francisco Opera’s summer season started with “Carmen” on Wednesday, June 5, and there we were, at the most famous opera of all, eager to (silently) sing along, and a tiny bit embarrassed for liking the opera that’s most easy to like.

Of course, said Nancy Bechtle, with whom we talked before the opera began, the music that’s most beloved is most beloved because it’s the most lovable. A classic achieves that status because it’s a crowd-pleaser. Thus relieved of the guilt of being unsophisticated — a feeling always enforced by all the aficionados who are able to actually follow the plots of operas as well as the scores for the music — we were in the mood to be thrilled at every snap of the toreador’s cape.

An hour before the opera began, in response to an invitation, we got to follow Master of Properties Lori Harrison on a walk around the backstage areas of the War Memorial Opera House. The stage was already set for this production of “Carmen,” which was directed by Francesca Zambello, came from the Sydney Opera House and uses large curved Richard Serra-like panels rotated into convex and concave backdrops.

Just inside the door to the stage, precisely placed upon tables were props, a startling array of knives and guns in one arrangement; ceramic ewers on others. Beneath an orange tree in the center of the set were baskets heaped with faux oranges. The setting is Seville, the set is simple, the “fruit” imported for the occasion from the Australian production, arrayed in accordance with what Harrison described as Zambello’s philosophy: more and bigger.

Harrison pointed to the tracks and the overhead equipment that enables pieces of scenery to be hauled around the stage; to the desk of the stage manager, who has worked on the production “from Day One” and whose post is a command center for most of what happens during a performance. There were monitors everywhere, as well as quickchange booths allowing modesty for performers who have seconds to change.

We walked down to the dressing rooms (men’s and women’s are separate, the men to the north and the women to the south, as are the restrooms in the Opera House, said Harrison), and the wig shop, where rows of hairdos sat patiently on shelves waiting for their heads to come.

Elsewhere in the vast behind-thecurtain space, sets for “Rusalka” and “Orlando,” the two other operas of the season, were stored for the evening. Most grand opera takes place in grand spaces, so it wasn’t surprising to see paneled walls, massive mantles, a towering wall decorated with faux taxidermy deer heads (the antlers just repaired after suffering shipping mishaps, said Harrison). Less expected was a dingy abattoir (from “Rusalka,” but evoking “Sweeney Todd”), dripping with blood, and a pond that would be filled with water before being lifted to the stage, by a complicated mechanism that Harrison explained.

She pointed to a strip of carpet in one area of the floor, “for the horse” in Carmen, she said, because it does make a lot of noise. I thought she was referring to some “War Horse” sort of mechanical contraption, but it turned out it was a real horse, whose entrance — thanks to this backstage preparation — was as though on little cat feet.

Posted in crannies and on columns around this vast area — a whole village, actually, which tends to its business, which is making the whole village on stage come to life — are signs with names and dates on them, “Kevin Rogers, AKA Snowman, 1967 to 2012,” for example, posted by the San Francisco Ballet. These are tributes to people who once worked in the house, the signs the equivalent of retiring the number of a beloved baseball star. Rogers was a flyman, managing pieces of equipment that move overhead.

It’s a tradition in keeping with the culture-worshiping religion that has long inhabited this space.

Bonnie Jones pointed the way to the catalog for the San Francisco Public Library’s Summer Stride programs, a startling array of educational/entertaining programs, all free, around town.

I don’t know how you’re spending your summer, but I am sorely tempted by Alka-Seltzer Rockets, DIY Ice Cream, Marshmallow Engineering, Crown & Tiara Workshop (timed to prepare for Pride), Make Your Own Lip Balm, The Curious World of Seaweed, Toilet Paper Roll Flower, The F Word: Fermentation!, and Death & Dying, a three-part series.