The Metropolitan Opera is back in town, and Harvard men are again signing for walk-on parts at $1 a night. Each evening about 20 students don tights and helmets, push onto a crowded stage, and burble background noises. The Crimson sent a reporter to the scene for an eyewitness report of their activities.

I was a supernumerary.

Last Saturday night, on the stage of the Boston Opera House, I carried a spear in Aida--a spear with a big red tassel at the end. My roommate wore a wig and looked like a cocker spaniel.

In the triumphal march I walked right up to the center of the stage. The Christian Science Monitor said this scene was the best part of the opera, and added, "The always amazing business of deploying the throng without confusion was managed with the usual skill."

Skill, will. None of us knew what we were doing. They never told us.

Senkahamen Says Hello

We walked into the Opera House through the stage door at 7 p.m., looking haughty. Inside, we were met by a high priest of Thebes, who said his name was Senkahamen and went to Belmont High School. He led us up six flights of stairs to a hot room where boys were getting dressed and undressed.

Some of them were soldiers and were wearing breastplates, and some were peasants and were wearing patched-up pillowcases. All of them were wearing pink tights. These worked very well; we simply put them on over our bare legs and pulled them very tight, and they looked just like bare legs.

Poop Show

When we were dressed, we went downstairs and wandered over the stage, watching the scantily-clad priestesses, the scantily-clad dancers, and the electricians. Then a man in a tuxedo shooed us away and the curtain went up. There was so much noise backstage that we couldn't hear the audience coughing, much less the opera.

When the act ended, the Temple of Thebes shot 'way up into the air, and down came the market-place. It was just like shooting a bullet at the sky and having a ring-tailed pheasant come down instead.

Suddenly Mr. Barrone lined us up, gave us spears, and told us to march. Boy, were we excited!

We marched onto the stage and did a column-left-about and marched off. It was all over. For half a second I had been on the center of the stage, and I had even heard someone in the boxes snicker.

We climbed up on a platform overlooking Kurt Baum, In the middle of some aria, Mr. Barrone yelled at us, "Raise your spears, boys!" We raised our spears. Then he yelled, "Wave your spears, boys!" We waved our spears.

We were all impressed with this skillful management of the throng. The audience hadn't heard Mr. Barrone at all, because the orchestra played some loud music to cover up for him.

As Aida cried to her father, Mr. Barrone slipped us a buck and we left.