Now it's completely done over and we're going around again." "Starting in about 1991 we fixed the garret, then the cafe. "We have done a face-lift to basically every piece of scenery," Diaz said. Asked recently by The New York Times how he thought the public would react if he brought in a new version, Met general manager Peter Gelb replied: "I'm not going to find out."īut given its venerable age, many pieces of the set have needed refurbishing over time. Because he did the figuring out for us."Īnd the production isn't going away anytime soon. "The amazing thing is he has the biggest shows and they're the easiest to work.
He took the building itself, and he took all its wagons and used everything to its fullest extent," he said. Most Met productions are built to last 20-25 years, but this one is going strong 37 years after its premiere in 1981.ĭiaz, now in his 46th season at the Met, worked with Zeffirelli when he designed the sets and still speaks with awe about the experience. Without such a quick change the audience would have to wait through a half-hour intermission for a second act that lasts just 19 minutes.Īudiences worldwide will get to see the results for themselves on Saturday when "La Boheme" is broadcast to movie theaters as part of the Met's Live in HD series. The process is reversed between acts, but this time when the cafe set slides in from the side, it's crowded with people, and the "sky" is pulled up out of sight so the whole street scene is visible. Then the garret arrives on another wagon from stage left and the music begins. The front of the cafe slides off to stage right on a rolling platform called a "wagon," the houses are pushed back, and a gray gauze scrim representing the sky comes down to hide the rear half of the set. "They need 12 minutes of focus so it can just come out and be ready to go," he said.Ībout 15 minutes before show time, Act II disappears. The reverse order is necessary, Diaz explained, so that lighting cues for the street scene can be tested ahead of time. ("Organized chaos," is how he described it with a laugh.) "We do it backwards - Act II first, then Act I," said Diaz, who was overseeing backstage work before a performance last week as about 50 carpenters, electricians and painters buzzed about the set.
There's a secret to the rapid scene change that the audience never guesses: The second-act set is put together onstage long before the opera even begins.
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