SFO Supers in International Herald Tribune

The subject of Harry Rolnick's occasional column "Ear for Opera" in the Paris-based newspaper International Herald Tribune on Wednesday, March 7, was Supers.

Supernumeraries | Sharing the Stage

Wanted: Extras with Patience

Dressed as an apple tree, trying to hoist a naked lady off a cart with one arm, the other lamely grasping her legs so she won't fall into the orchestra pit before a shouting chorus and a gasping audience in the San Francisco Opera House may not be the most dignified way of making a living. But for the ancient society of supernumeraries � an 18th-century term for �extras,� from the Latin �extra numbers� � these antics are part of a night's work.

A super, extra � or more popularly, ��spear-carrier� � may be a professional actor or, more likely, a student or architect who volunteers for the job. With up to 60 hours of rehearsals at unearthly hours, peasant wages and usually anonymity, they could be deemed the forgotten people. The spear-carrier appellation hardly describes today's supers. Depending on regulations and tradition, they may stand on stage with a spear, litter, knife or camel's rein (ah, those poor, hot marchers in Aida !), or they may roller-skate and fall off balustrades.

They are also at the mercy of both conductors and artists. Walter Hershman of New York's City Opera noted how a famous tenor waited until the orchestra was playing as loudly as possible to tell him: �If you stand in my light once more, I'm going to push you into the orchestra pit.�

Most opera companies, even New York's Metropolitan Opera, lack a company of supers and hire for each opera. Provincial companies like the Louisville Opera company go to high schools or universities, where the kids are thrilled to be on stage.

The supers of the San Francisco Opera obviously have the most fun since they are all volunteers. They produce their own supernumerary newsletter, have a rather closed community and can be on equal basis with the divas. Paul Szczesiul recalls one opening act of Tosca , with the feisty soprano Carol Vaness. �For no reason at all,� he says, �She suddenly mooned us just before entering. The scene was a church, so we kept the laughter to ourselves.�

Against this is the Canadian Opera Company, where supers are ordinary folk. �The only talent, explains the super co-coordinator, Analee Stein, is being non-union and fitting into our costumes.� Adds her partner, Liz Walker, �You forgot patience and devotion.� For the money earned in the traditional opera house, the last two are essential. In San Francisco, rates are $5 for rehearsals and $10 per performance. Yet the houses claim that their supers will drive for hours just for this taste of show business.

Mark Burstein (the aforesaid �apple tree� from Mefistofele ) has been a super for 10 years with no regrets. �We stand next to, over, sometimes under the best singers in the business, with the best seat in the house,� he says.

European opera houses keep lists of amateur supers, while the Royal Opera House at London's Covent Garden insists on professional unionized actors and offers union rates. In their recent Bartered Bride , the circus performers came from, yes, the circus, where presumably even the horses were organized. German houses keep lists of ��Statisierie'' from which the stage directors may call, but will recruit for very specialized parts when needed.

The exception is New York's City Opera, which calls itself a theatrical stock company, with seven supers, called �super mimes,� on seasonal contract.

Under the aegis of the super coordinator, Kristen Gavner, these supernumeraries individually specialize in fencing, character-acting, miming, stilt-walking and just looking good. They train each other in their various specialties and bring on, from New York's talent pool, ad-hoc players when necessary. For Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges , the supers included two stilt-walkers, two musclemen, four jugglers and the usual attendants. While not permitted to actually sing or dance, they can mime singing and execute simple stylized steps.

Historically, supers were dominant in the very first operas. Monteverdi specified �Servants, Soldiers, Disciples of Seneca, Consuls, Tribunes, Senators, etc.� in his 1642 Incoronazione di Poppea . As the Sondheim of Venice, Monteverdi would have attracted aristocrats and riffraff to run, not walk, to the nearest gondola for an appearance at the ornate theater.

Twenty years later, the Italian-French composer Lully wrote opera-ballets that employed up to 100, mainly female, extras simply to look beautiful for Louis XIV.

But the halcyon age of the supernumerary came two centuries later. When the French librettist Eugène Scribe specified up to 600 extras in grand spectacles written for Meyerbeer, Auber and Halévy. Music and drama were on an equal basis with body sculpture and tableaux vivants.

However, the super does come back in unlikely places. The Canadian Opera Company presented Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex , putting out a notice for 70 talented bodies � literally.

�First, they had to be dead bodies on a hill,� says Stein of the Canadian Opera Company, �then all 70 had to be resurrected and become alive, then they had to die once again. All of this without a hint of choreography, lest the dancers' union complain.�

Spotlight | Specialized Skills

Operatic Acrobats Eat Fire, Walk on Stilts and Come to the Rescue

The Bartered Bride at the Royal Opera House in London

The Stuttgart Opera audition for supernumeraries in Puccini's Turandot this year called for �naked virgins, no singing or dancing permitted,� but the producers didn't verify the one essential, and the other would be camouflaged by makeup and gauze. These bare necessities are just one of the unique talents demanded in the world of supernumeraries. New York's Metropolitan Opera once had a call for �Super Nymph-Pushers,� who could stand under the carts of goddesses for Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos . Stuttgart again pushed the envelope for an impoverished circus for Smetana's Bartered Bride by calling for extras in the mammal category: a dog that looked a little like a horse, and a flock of geese that could follow a singer around the stage. Chicago's Lyric Opera outdid even that when the super captain, Bill Waters, auditioned �lions, apes, dinosaurs and rhinoceroses� for The Magic Flute . (Real mammals, alas, are tone-deaf, so he settled for rhythmic teenagers.)

Hardly animal but certainly specialized supers are John and Alice Grimaldi, who stilt-walk, eat fire, juggle, turn somersaults and are typical operatic acrobats. While they perform in carnivals, medieval tournaments and children's shows, they are regulars at the Metropolitan Opera and City Opera in New York. Their operas include Manon , La Bohème , Carmen , Love for Three Oranges , and Pagliacci , among others, and their lives can be fraught with mental and physical danger.

As a fire-eater, John manipulated torches just a few feet from Jessye Norman, not aware of her almost paranoid fear of fire. (�She took it in her stride, only revealing her dread later,� says John.) In Manon , an otherwise dignified Afghan hound was inspired to howl a duet with Renée Fleming (the dog was diplomatically walked outside). Carts of supers in Carmen were almost stalled by artificial spaghetti strands, and he had to pick up the remnants while simultaneously juggling some rings.

Alice Grimaldi had a more serious disaster this year as a stilt-walker in the Met's Manon when a prop bench was moved, and she had an accident that put her out for the season.

�I don't know who moved the bench,� Alice says, �but part of the problem is that rehearsals for specialists have been cut, and we're in that gray area of opera personnel, both in compensation and non-union protection.�

City Opera has the advantage of one long-time core of players teaching others. So in Intermezzo , the resident skater, John Henry Thomas, disguised roller-blades as ice-skates and taught three of his colleagues the fine art of rolling to complex Strauss music around the chorus, dancers and soloists.

Not that specialty supernumeraries are without their problems. The ex-dancer Raven Wilkinson, with the City Opera for a decade, had to relearn how to walk like a character, not like a stylized dancer. And in her supernumerary career, her problems are far different than those of any mere danseuse.

�I fell off an elephant in Mefistofele , had my nose broken as a character mailbox in Foss's Griffelkin and was septically wounded by the long toenails of a satanic rabbit in Manon , she says. �But that's theater, and that's opera, and it's still total satisfaction.�