Q: During rehearsals, did you have any contact with the singers?
A: In most cases, the singers are rather isolated from the extras, but I had friends in the chorus. I once met Beverly Sills, though. I was in The Siege of Corinth, a Rossini opera, which was her Met debut. I didn't think she was very good, actually. It was exciting, though, just meeting her. I didn't know what to say--I was a 15-year-old kid, I was terrified. We talked about the weather. She was very friendly.
The ballet, though, did have contact with the singers. One tenor, who is a married man with kids, spent most of his time chasing after the ballet women, one or two in particular. He was very much on the make, smooth and slick.
Q: Did you ever meet him?
A: No, but I knew the ballet girl he was after.
Q: What do extras do when they're not onstage during an opera?
A: Most of them don't even watch the performances. They linger upstairs, they talk. There's a snack bar behind stage where everybody eats and hangs out. We used to play hearts during the performances back in the dressing room. If it was a good opera, I watched every time. I spent so much time sitting on a little stool, tucked away in the wings, watching the performances.
Also, just watching the Met's technical effects is a lot of fun. I think it has the largest stage in the world, and when you look up, you literally do not see the ceiling--top to bottom is something like ten stories. The entire set rolls back and to the sides, so they can change whole sets in the middle of an act. Also, it's divided into several smaller pieces horizontally which can each be set at a different height. The Met is proud of spending fortunes of money because it's not the Met if they have to cheapen it. And in a way, it's a good thing, because it's one of the four best companies in the world, and arguably the best.
Q: Was it ever disillusioning to see the opera from so close?
A: Being up close can sometimes affect the majesty of the performance. For example when, in a pause, you see the heroine turn around, face upstage, and spit. Somehow it destroys the romantic image, and it happens not infrequently. Also, a lot of times onstage the chorus chats. The Met's acoustics are incredible: you can sneeze or speak really loudly upstage, and nobody in the audience will hear it. Nevertheless, the director is not so fond of that.
Q: What are some of the coveted extra roles, the ones reserved for the inner core?
A: One is being a waiter in (Verdi's) La Boheme. The singers go to a cafe and walk off without paying the bill, so the waiters look outraged, another tricky emotion. Verdi's Tosca is a great opera for extras. In the Met production, the extras get to be secret police, and in the end about ten of them get the firing squad. They get to kill the tenor.
Being a juror in (Giordano's) Andrea Chenier is also a good role. It's set in the French Revolution; Andrea Chenier is a poet who's condemned to death, and in the last act there's a trial by a revolutionary court, and everything's in chaos. So we extras really got into being a mob peasant jury--we'd blacken in teeth and wear wigs with hair sticking out, and put filth all over ourselves and make ourselves extra ugly. And then we'd sit in the juror's box on stage and chat and throw things and have a great time. I didn't like the rest of the opera, though, so I didn't watch it. I just did my part and cut out, went back to play hearts.
Q: Have you continued to perform in college?
A: The Met season ends April 15th or so, and then it goes immediately on tour. They go to all the American cities, do concerts in the parks, and then they go abroad. Last year, when they came to Boston, I was in (Verdi's) Don Carlos as captain of the king's guard and had my own spot in the procession. I stood behind the king looking very important while they burned people at the stake. I was also in (Verdi's) Otello and (Poulenc's) Dialogue of the Carmelites.
Q: Have you worked for any other companies besides the Met?
A: After the Met season ended, I was in a very small opera company in the Beacon theatre in New York which did Adriana Lecouvreur by Cilea. It was their first production and it showed. In the ball scene, the ballet dancer was supposed to float in on a platform through the smoke and dance around very ethereally. But they started the dry ice too early, so in the middle of the scene before, smoke started coming up from under the setting and flooding the stage. It was very pathetic. The company has not been heard from since.
That same year I also did the American Ballet Theatre's new production of (Stravinsky's) Firebird. They generally pick really ballet-looking guys, extra skinny and tall, but they picked me anyway. You have to fit into their costumes, and the largest waist on any of them is a thirty. I was not a thirty, but I lied, and appeared at the first rehearsal with many safety pins. My part was to stand on stage during the wedding scene.
Q: If an extra doesn't sing, doesn't speak, and generally just moves around stage as part of a huge mass-what is it that makes being an extra so worthwhile?
A: The real thrill comes from just being on stage where you can hear and see everything from incredibly close up. That's really what makes the whole thing so fantastic--you could be standing three feet away from the singer. You get incredible exhilaration: the sound is so fantastic, far better than from the audience. Especially if there's a chorus on stage, it's so full and rich and it comes from all around you. It just sweeps you away. And with most operas, the more you're in them, the more you really enjoy them. I've been in something like 30 Aidas, and each one is thoroughly enjoyable. You can listen to them forever.