My Alternate Blog Life

Rehearsals for La Traviata start next week. The super captain send an email saying that once again the opera company is looking for guest bloggers so I whipped up an entry and emailed it to the woman in charge. It hasn't shown up on the blog yet but I think it will. Last year's social dynamics thing went a little too far, publicity-wise, so I decided to tone it down a bit and submit more user-friendly entries. This one was inspired by a comment I left on one of Joyce DiDonato's recent blog entries. It sort of reads like a high school essay. Don't worry, my entries here will not be affected, I promise.

June 9, 2008

A Super Summer - What to Wear?

I'm very excited to be a part of my <>'s summer season. This year I'll be a supernumerary, or, "super," in La Traviata. The supers perform the non-speaking, non-singing roles in operas. I haven't had the first rehearsal yet so I don't know exactly what part I'll be playing, but I've already had to submit a form with all my measurements for the costume department.

It amazes me that someone can look at this list of measurements and sew together a costume to fit. Last year as a monk my costume seemed simple – a monk's robe – but each person is a different height, with different length arms, so the costume department had to make many last minute adjustments so we all looked exactly the same. Then they label the costumes so you don't grab the wrong one when it's time to get dressed.

The costume department does more than make all the costumes from scratch. During the production one costume person was in the dressing room before the show helping anyone who needed assistance. Several costume people were backstage checking each person prior to going on stage. They were busy for most of the performance, fixing hems, repairing tears and doing whatever else needed to be done to ensure that we all looked perfect. I'm not sure but I think each lead in the production had a dedicated costume person who helped them change between scenes. In spite of all this crazy activity just before and during the show, they always had a friendly smile and were always ready to help.

I'm looking forward to finding out what kind of costume I'll be wearing this year!


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Is that ending dorky enough? Wow, it's true, I really am a geek. Well, that doesn't surprise me. It also doesn't surprise me that no matter what I do, I can't get this section to go flush to the left like the top section.