Musical magic

Mozart classic brought to life

Costume designer Lisa Holmes doesn’t have a tattoo, nor does she have any desire to get one. For a fortnight, though, the 26-year-old went about her daily life in Auckland with a fake hummingbird tattoo emblazoned down one thigh.

Created from one of her sketches, it showed the extent the young designer was prepared to go to test one of her designs before it went on stage.

Last night, that tattoo, and many others, came to life on the Wellington stage in the Mozart opera The Magic Flute, worn by many of the cast.

Says Holmes: ‘‘I got lots of comments over the week. The local cafe barista said, ‘Oh wow, where did you get that done?’ That was cool because I was able to talk about my work and the opera, and to people get excited about it.’’

The Massey University fashion graduate flicks through a lookbook of beautiful hand drawings of costumes she created for the big-scale production being staged by New Zealand Opera.

Overseen by Elizabeth Whiting, a costume designer who has been in the game for more than three decades, the pair watched as over six months their designs transformed from page to stage. ‘‘It’s the most exciting thing to see your designs walking on stage, being worn by the characters,’’ says Holmes, who received a scholarship to work on The Magic Flute. ‘‘As a designer, you don’t usually get the opportunity to see such a massive collection come to life like this, but here, you’ve got a huge team and the backing of the New Zealand Opera.’’

Playing Wellington and Auckland until the end of June, The Magic Flute is a new production of Mozart’s masterpiece opera, which was first performed at Freihaustheater auf der Wieden in Vienna in 1791. Directed by Arts Laureate Sara Brodie, the New Zealand Opera’s production is a family-friendly, feel-good opera with a star-studded international cast, including the New York-based Kiwi soprano, Amelia Berry, backed up by local singers.

For the last year, the endearingly enthusiastic Holmes has been getting to grips with opera language – the difference between a mezzo, a tenor and a soprano, and learning about Mozart, Puccini and Verdi.

In her first role with New Zealand Opera last year, she assisted Whiting with the costumes for Tosca, and also worked as an assistant on dressing the casts of Madame Butterfly and La Traviata. When the sopranos and mezzos begin warming up in the dressing room, the former Wellingtonian flees because ‘‘the noise is incredible’’.

Designing for the big stage appeals to Holmes, who is also associate designer for the Auckland Theatre Company’s forthcoming That Bloody Woman. She won the top technology prize at Queen Margaret College in Wellington, where she was also named dux. However, rather than becoming the next Karen Walker of the fashion world, the first-class honours fashion graduate was seduced by spectacular productions and their costumes.

‘‘The thing I like about opera and theatre is the fun, the scale, the vibrancy and the opportunity to do anything,’’ she explains. ‘‘The fact that you really need to think about presenting a character to someone. It’s a completely different world to fashion. The only skills that the two share are the design process and construction skills.’’

Whiting, meanwhile, is an avid theatre-goer and arts fan who blends her two passions in her job.

The Auckland-based freelancer entered the world of costume design in the 1980s, through the former Theatre Corporate, a small professional theatre company run by Raymond