Of course I have a particular fondness for the dragon. How many trucks does it take to load in the Ring set? There were a couple years spent in the conceptual phase, and then we spent about two years in the shop. How long did it take originally to build this Ring set?īefore the curtain hit the deck on the Bob Israel Ring for the last time in 1995, I think Speight had already spoken with Tom Lynch as a designer and Stephen Wadsworth and started that ball rolling. Siegfried and the Rhine Daughters on the "Gorge" set We wrapped up our work on the Ring with the tail of the dragon about two weeks ago. So over the last couple of months we brought the tail out here and fit it around other projects.
SEATTLE OPERA SCHEDULE 2013 PATCH
He can wiggle the tail a little bit, but he suffers every blow, and when it’s time to put him back on the stage, it’s time to patch up his tail. Siegfried does a little battle with the tail of Fafner when he comes across it in the cave, and the dragon can’t really fight back. Needless to say, there’s some wear and tear that occurs to all these things, so at the end of the run, it goes back into the warehouse, and we work the repair into our schedule. What kind of work do you need to do to get the Ring set ready again? All of those shows except for the Ring are rented out to other opera companies. When it’s not at the opera house, it joins the rest of our scenic inventory of 30 or so operas that we store in the warehouse down in Kent Valley. Stefan Vinke (Siegfried) consoles the dying Fafnerįor photos of the new dragon Michael Moore and the Seattle Opera Scenic Studios created for our neighbors at the Experience Music Project, CLICK HERE. I guess you could say I have a dream job. When I’m deep into a project, I can roll over, punch the button, and in the middle of the night jot down the idea I’ve been dreaming about and then I can go back to sleep. The ideas don’t come to me at two o’clock in the afternoon it’s more like 3 a.m. So I find out everything I can and stay awake several nights. The designer then provides an illustration of what it might look like, but ultimately, what the set has to do and physically be comes across my desk out here.
You have to start with a piece of paper and sketch up how you’re going to do it, which goes back to the question of what does the director want to do? What does he have in mind? Can you storyboard out the action? Just about any of these challenges start with a plan of action from the point of view of the stage director. The forest of Das Rheingold's "Ridge Terrain" setĬan you give an example of how a design idea evolves-from designer to scenic studio to stage?
In the end, the trees are little more than paint. Then we apply Vacuform plastic bark and aluminum twigs. In this case, we used the aircraft industry from the ’20s and ’30s as a model: we stretched Dacron fabric (used to cover the wings of antique airplanes) over a super lightweight aluminum frame.
SEATTLE OPERA SCHEDULE 2013 HOW TO
So the question was: how to make a forest that’s featherweight but that looks very convincing. People like you and me have to be able to pick them up and move them into and out of a truck and get them to and from the stage. If you’ve ever tried to lift up a tree, you know they’re pretty heavy, and our set, of course, has to be lightweight and portable. What are the trees made of in the ridge terrain set? Some of the art is being able to step back and assess what you’re doing. With an organic shape or form, it’s difficult to avoid obvious repeating patterns. It is also difficult to make things chaotic. We have to evolve our scenery in weeks or months at best.
Nature has had millions to billions of years of opportunity to make things tricky and complex and pays no attention to time or budget for that matter. What’s most challenging about representing nature in a set? This production-so often called the “green” Ring-is known for its beautiful naturalistic scenery. We talked about the challenges of the current Ring set, the dragon (of course!), and some of his favorite Ring memories. Michael Moore, Seattle Opera’s Scenic Studios Manager, has been making Seattle Opera’s sets come true for the past 34 years.
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