When an onstage action requires a specialty object, it is the job of the props department to create whatever is required.

This past week, members of our stage crew have been busy in our theater’s scene shop constructing four new benches for Simon Boccanegra. These new benches will function as ‘stunt-doubles’ to sustain the abuse of being tossed around in the choreographed action during the Council Chamber fight scene.

Custom aluminum castings and turned leg fixtures

Each bench has over one hundred and fifty individual components made from a variety of materials including custom aluminum castings, turned leg fixtures, raw pine materials, and ornamental details improvised from bits of rope, egg and dart molding, wooden appliqués and large upholstery tacks.

Stage Technician adds final decorative elements

After the props department completes the construction, the benches are delivered to the scenic department for painting and surface treatment. The performers will then use these benches in the rehearsal hall and onstage for the production.

The finished benches ready for use onstage

For almost all of the productions at Los Angeles Opera, we utilize between two and eight followspots in various locations. Most commonly these are located in the followspot booth at the top of the auditorium, at the back of the upper balcony.

View from stage looking at the followspot booth

View looking directly into followspots

Operator point of view from followspot booth

The lead followspot operator works with the lighting designer during the rehearsal process to develop cues which are then conveyed to the additional followspot operators. Our followspot operators have many years of experience for this deceptively difficult task.

A followspot operator at work in the booth

The Don Giovanni set has arrived! Seven (7) forty-foot shipping containers (over 16,000 cubic feet) of scenery and props traveled to Los Angeles from Chicago via rail and truck. Our union stage crew of approximately 50 stagehands has been extremely busy this week. By day five the crew is sixty hours into assembling the set, hanging lights, building and repairing props, touching up scenery and prepping all aspects of technical production. 

Stage crew unloading a spectacular silk flame effect which will rise through the Giovanni stage floor on cue

Scenic painters applying new artwork to a Giovanni backdrop at the request of the set designer

The stage looks empty early in the process of hanging more than 700 lighting fixtures at stage level. Lighting equipment is lowered on ‘battens’ that are lifted 40 feet in the air for the production.

Carpenters building platforms for use as mock-up scenery in the rehearsal room

A lot of attention has been given to the fire breather effect in our new production of The Two Foscari.

The fire breather, an experienced professional, enters the stage with a lit self-extinguishing torch. On a pre-determined musical cue he fills his mouth with liquid, then blows the liquid through the flame of the torch. 

The size of the fire ball is determined by the quantity of  liquid the fire breather expels. 

Development and testing of this effect have been taking place for months here at the LA Opera. LA Opera works closely with the Los Angeles Fire Department and acquires special permits for all open-flame effects like this. Extensive time was invested at the costume shop to optimize the fire breather’s costume.

At the conclusion of the effect the fire breather extinguishes the torch by releasing the “dead-man” switch on the handle of the torch. He then exits the stage, hands the torch to a union prop person and rinses his mouth. 

Using a time-lapse photography technique, our FOH (front of house) crewcam captured the scenery change-over from Don Giovanni to The Two Foscari.

Madame Butterfly is a rental production new to Los Angeles. This production has come to us from San Francisco Opera via multiple 53-foot tractor trailers. 

On day one, the scenery is unloaded from the trucks by the Carpenter Department, who will later assemble the many pieces.

In addition to the scenic elements that arrive with a rental production, we use a combination of different soft goods from the LA Opera stock. 

In this photo, a carpenter hangs a stock black velour masking leg. The masking serves the purpose of finishing out the edges of the scenery to obscure the backstage architecture and the lighting fixtures. All of the rigging systems onstage can be lowered to the floor for ease of assembling.  

This image of the Butterfly scenery shows some of the hardwall (wood) flats. The piece in the foreground (show portal 1) weighs 1470 pounds and is suspended on two batten pipes. 

Except for the floor, all of the Madame Butterfly scenery is rigged from a grid overhead and will "fly" in and out of view on cue.

Numerous puzzle pieces of scenery for our new production of The Flying Dutchman are assembled to create one cohesive and spectacular vision. 

This is an early view from the auditorium looking through to the backstage. This bridge weighs nearly 5000 pounds and is an integral and dynamic element of the scenery. The bridge “flies” in and out on cue, controlled by a computerized chain motor console.

The deck is composed of hundreds of individual pieces of structural steel. When fully assembled with its mirrored surface, the deck becomes the playing area for dozens of cast members.  

The  scenery as designed is comprised of layers of vivid imagery  that only become apparent when completed with show lighting and effects. In this image, final preparations are made for the first onstage rehearsal.

Crew View: Scenery Change-over from Flying Dutchman to Cinderella from LA Opera on Vimeo.

Using a time-lapse photography technique, our FOH (front of house) and backstage crewcams captured the scenery change-over from The Flying Dutchman to Cinderella.

The Tosca scenery arrived from Houston in three 53-foot trucks in thousands of small pieces. It normally takes our stage crew two or three days to assemble all of the pieces into a full stage setting. With rental or incoming productions, minor repairs often have to be made due to the stress of shipping and handling. By the end of the third day, we have begun to make these minor repairs and scenic touch-ups.

Replica hand-carved foam sculptures were designed for this production. The sculptures are hard-coated with urethane foam and treated with scenic paint to look like stone.

Each act has a different silk curtain. These silk drops are weighted at the bottom with a drapery chain to keep them from fluttering around when the curtain flies in and out. Note that a small bit of drapery chain hangs below the curtain. This chain will be sewn back into the bottom of the drop. 

One of the final elements of the scenery to be assembled is the ceiling. The aluminum triangular trusses serve as a lightweight skeletal structure. The ceiling is attached and held in place by four batten pipes over the stage.

A scenic artist touches up the walls with gray paint custom-mixed to match the existing color. Note that the ceiling is now in place in the set.