Saturday Morning at the Opera

On Saturdays from June 2 through August 25, The Santa Fe Opera has Opera Insider events on Saturday mornings. 

Opera Guild members will welcome guests to the theater at 8:30 AM with coffee and muffins. Below, we are gathering after our coffee and being welcomed by someone from the Santa Fe guild. 

 

Unfortunately, inside the gate, no camera nor cell phone usage is allowed.

The Insider event starts at 9 AM, when an Opera staff member talk about his or her specialty. I chose to attend today because the Costume Director, David Burke was the designated speaker.

The talk was briefly interrupted by a gun shot test on stage. As we sat and talked about costume design, one of the sets for Tosca was being assembled on stage in preparation for a run-through today.

Afterward, we broke into small groups for backstage tours, led by docents.

We were treated to some history and a tour that took us all around the campus. We peeked in on bustling costume department, crafts group (which included the milliners) and wig makers. We chatted briefly with a carpenter who was putting the finishing touches on an incredible hand-carved table and a seamstress who was pushing a dressmaker's dummy wearing a beautifully embellished skirt, part of a design for which we had been shown the illustration earlier.

We saw the water treatment facility--water from the roof is used to water the surrounding landscape and toured the dressing rooms, the orchestra waiting area and the stage manager's area in the wings.

And then we went shopping in the Opera store ;-)

Once outside, I played with the landscape photo option in the point-and-shoot camera I wooted earlier this week.

Look close (or click for a larger view) and you can see that that the woman in the white t-shirt appears in the image twice: leaving the gift shop and approaching her friends on the bench/flower garden.