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CONVERSATION WITH JOHN GAGE,

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION FOR THE DALLAS OPERA

MAY 10, 2006

A conversation between Director of Production John Gage and Suzanne Calvin, Associate Director of Marketing, about building productions and juggling responsibilities with a man who has mastered both.

Gage: I joined The Dallas Opera in 1977. I was here for three seasons as the production stage manager working for Artistic Director Nicola Rescigno. In those years, I used to split the season, working Dallas in the fall and then going down to Miami Opera from January through April. After that, I took a month off before heading to Santa Fe to work as stage manager there. Dallas was on a very tight production schedule in those days. The entire season fell between the end of the State Fair and Christmas.

Calvin: So, how did you happen to come back here to create the new position of Director of Production?

Gage: I had gone to Milwaukee to be general manager of the opera company there, Florentine Opera. I stayed on for nine years before moving to Columbus Opera to help them get through bankruptcy. A couple of years later, I got a call from Plato Karayanis, who said, “John, the company’s just gotten so big now that I can’t handle this myself.” Because Plato took a lot of those responsibilities – the production management – upon himself. He did it very well, having been on staff at San Francisco Opera and tour manager for the Metropolitan Opera Tour, but the Dallas Opera season, by then, had expanded to five productions and even more performances. Plato just didn’t have the time to address every issue that came up, from the logistics of bringing in a European production to creating new shows of our own. So I agreed to come back to Dallas to create the position, which was very much like being the general director of a small opera company, what I was doing already; however, I thought about it long and hard.

Calvin: It is like being a general director, but one who climbs into the trenches. I’m thinking of that problem with the gondola used to carry the three spirits in “The Magic Flute.”

Gage: It had been manually operated when first used in San Diego, but they decided they were going to motorize the thing, only when they calculated the size of the motor needed to drive the mechanism up 32 feet from the stage floor, they didn’t factor in friction resistance. We got the little girls up into the air but then we couldn’t move them. Finally, the day before we opened, we disconnected the device and re-rigged it to be moved up and down and from side to side, manually. Of course, that also meant we had to train the men handling the gondola...

Calvin: Can’t have them dumping young ladies from the rafters!

Gage: No indeed. The teenagers were very securely strapped in, but if you pulled it too fast the contraption would start to sway back and forth and make them nauseous.

Calvin: Let’s talk about the process of building a new production – you’re there from the “git go.”

Gage: It’s lengthy and tedious but always interesting. Karen (Stone) and Plato before her will have a vision of a new production, for instance, last year’s production of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci. With the Director of Artistic Administration Jonathan Pell, she will make contact with a director and discuss possible design teams who do work that we find significant or in some way, special, to come to Dallas. Next, there are discussions between the director and designers (costumes, lighting and so forth) about the look of the piece. They will then come back to us with sketches and descriptions that indicate what they have in mind and it’s up to the general director to say, “Yes, I buy into that concept. Run with it. And, by the way, here’s how much money we have to spend.” At that point, the designer will get busy and construct a scale model of the proposed set design; the model for our new production of Verdi’s “Nabucco” is absolutely huge...

Calvin: And one heck of a design, I hear.

Gage: The model is very detailed, you can really see what’s going on. Next, we take it to the scenery shop to find out what it’s going to cost us to manufacture. Remember, this isn’t like building a house. This has to be built so that it functions onstage but then it also has to dismantle so it can go into storage or fit into trucks for transport to another opera company in some other part of the world. If the design comes in under budget...

Calvin: Gee, how often does that happen?

Gage: Not very often. But when it does we can go back to the designer and say if you have any other “bells and whistles” you’d like to add, go right ahead. More often than not, we decide it’s going to cost twenty or thirty or forty thousand more than we have to spend, so our task is to figure out ways to keep the look of the production, while cutting corners to bring it in on budget. This can mean changing production materials, using paints instead of dyes, wood instead of steel and so forth. Sometimes this process will begin a year or two in advance, on other occasions, there’s less time to plan. However, email has certainly made consultations with other companies easier. Our Cav-Pag will be going to Palm Beach Opera in the fall, followed by New York City Opera, and possibly Minneapolis, Milwaukee and several other companies after that and they all want to see what it looks like.

Calvin: In your time here, what production has impressed you the most, for all the right reasons?

Gage: That’s really difficult to say. We have a saying in our department, “Design it ugly and we’ll build it ugly. Design it beautiful and we’ll make it beautiful.” We don’t make any artistic judgments about the product that we’re putting on the stage; and I do look at it as a product. Our scenery is thirty feet tall and weighs four tons and you can’t make a lot of little changes to something like that, so when people start demanding them, we do the best we can to accommodate them, even if it means I have to kick the pet fish when I get home.

Calvin: You know what they say about the best-laid plans...What are some of the craziest and most unexpected things you’ve ever seen on our stage?

Gage: Actually, we’ve been pretty fortunate in that regard; we haven’t had a lot go wrong. I have a terrific crew here – dedicated and devoted to the opera company – and we work really hard to keep the singers from having to deal with any surprises. But a number of years ago, we were doing Hänsel and Gretel. The witch’s house is motorized with two men inside to actually steer the house into position on the stage. As it comes downstage, the house opens up to reveal the interior. Once it gets down to the curtain line, it goes into reverse and backs up in order to make room for the gingerbread children. Well, during one performance, a cable broke, cutting off all electrical power to the house. We closed the curtain, hustled every stagehand that we had, while the orchestra and the Maestro waited, moved it into position with the help of about twenty-five men. Then, we opened the curtain and continued as if nothing had happened.

Calvin: Have you ever had a situation in which a singer said, “I won’t sing on that thing, in that thing, or whatever?

Gage: It happens more often with costumes. “I’m not wearing that!” Fortunately, we’ve had great designers here, like Peter J. Hall, and the talents of Costume Coordinator Nancy Steele, but if a singer insists, we will re-design and re-build a costume to make it more to their liking. We were doing Aida in 1979. Miss Cruz-Romo, who was singing the title role, found her costumes perfectly acceptable; however, Miss Marilyn Horne, who was singing Amneris, insisted on all new costumes, designed by Peter Hall and made at the Metropolitan Opera Costume Shop, not the shop here. Peter was at the Metropolitan Opera at that particular moment and sent us three new costumes. So, come dress rehearsal, here’s Miss Horne in her spiffy new costumes and Miss Cruz-Romo looking great, and Mr. McCracken, singing Radames, says “I want new costumes for opening night,” just three days away. It so happens, we had a board member with a fashion company. He brought several drapers and cutters to the singer’s hotel room and Mr. McCracken stood on the coffee table as the experts created costumes on him, on the spot. We showed up at the theater a day later and the singer was a very happy guy.

Calvin: Peter J. Hall, in an earlier interview, told us that Luciano Pavarotti was always complaining about his costumes being too heavy. Essentially, he wanted his costumes made from something like chiffon, whether it was remotely appropriate or not.

Gage: Yes. I did a Bohème with him some years ago in Miami and Robert O’Hearn, the set designer, who he had worked with a lot at the Met, had designed a set that permitted a perfectly seamless transition from Act One to Act Two, so that as Mimi and Rudolfo sang the two high-C’s together, the scenery started moving and about ninety second later you were in the second act, in the square with Café Momus and everybody milling around. Pavarotti’s response was, “No, no! I take seven minutes here!” There was a huge discussion and the Maestro held sway. But Pavarotti did run back to his dressing room and down a number of diet sodas in that ninety seconds before he had to reappear. Costumes, though, are the biggest problem – a singer may look absolutely stunning, but they’ll say, “I know I don’t look good in that.” Or you’ll hear it from their spouse.

Calvin: Well, a lot of times the spouse, though well meaning, isn’t taking into account the character’s circumstances. The singers are not supposed to look like they’re ready for the cocktail party circuit.

Gage: We had a brown-haired soprano who just wouldn’t wear wigs. She was constantly appearing onstage in night scenes and the blue light used to simulate the sort of light you have at night, caused her hair to disappear altogether. All the audience could see was her little face, bobbing around. No matter how silly she looked, she wouldn’t be persuaded to use anything other than her natural hair.

Calvin: If we take away the principal singers, chorus and supernumeraries, which will vary from production to production, about how many people are working backstage during any given performance?

Gage: There isn’t a set number. It varies depending on the amount of scenery, whether its motorized or has to be pushed manually, how many costumes there are – If you have a very large chorus and a lot of supernumeraries or children – someone has to help them into these costumes. But, to answer your question: typically we have between 25 and 38 production technicians backstage working throughout a performance, eight to twelve dressers, half a dozen to a dozen wig and make-up artists, because the wigs are very expensive and we don’t let any of our singers put on their own wigs.

Calvin: Those wigs are incredible: human hair constructed strand by strand.

Gage: Hand-tied, hand-woven onto netting, yes. We also have four stage managers, who shepherd everyone and everything.

Calvin: That’s one thing I would like people to take away from this conversation, an understanding of the veritable army of people it takes to put on an opera.

Gage: That’s really true, it’s a very “people intensive” industry. And everybody at the opera is a star. I’ve heard stage hands bemoan, “If I’d only done that two seconds faster, the scene change would have gone so much better!”

Calvin: Don’t you think it’s the passion for the art form that permeates from the top to the bottom of this company?

Gage: When I worked in Milwaukee, there was one fellow who worked on the fly floor some three stories up, pulling ropes and that kind of thing. But he would be the first to tell you he was “not a ballet guy.” He loved the opera, in twelve years I never saw him miss a performance, but when the ballet moved in....he was out the door. It’s not unusual to see crew people standing in the wings watching a performance very intently, instead of going back to the greenroom to rest. And sometimes, you’ll hear them singing along, too!

Calvin: In watching production people at work, over the years, you must have developed a special level of respect for certain individuals...

Gage: Number One, without question, would be Drew Field our Technical Director. I met Drew when I was at Santa Fe, where he was technical director for a decade. He was with Sarah Caldwell at Boston for ten years and took the Boston Opera to Moscow and St. Petersburg, touring Europe, and he is one of the brightest and most dedicated people I know.

Calvin: And always affable.

Gage: Well, generally (laughs). Drew is really a wonderful human being, a clever problem-solver with a great eye for the artistic aspects of a production. He’s an MFA from Yale University and a former student of (set designer) Michael Yeargan. Our head carpenter, Stewart Hale, has been with us going on thirty years, as has head electrician Bill Bingham. Both started as teenagers and they will still, at the end of a fourteen hour day, climb a ladder and put themselves at risk to make something work...to make it better.

Calvin: What was it that attracted you to opera? Were you a music guy or a theater guy?

Gage: When I was in either the fifth or sixth grade they were doing a Christmas pageant at school and I played one of the angels on stage while my locker mate sang “O, Holy Night.” The teacher was standing out front and said, “This is so lovely, I wish you could all see it!” Well, it so happened I was one of the angels on the end and when I heard this, I thought, “Nobody’s going to miss me.” So, I jumped off the stage and went and stood next to the teacher. When the scene finished, I turned to her and said, “You know, you are absolutely right.” She replied with something like, “You’re outta here!” (laughs) “You’ll never be anything in the theater!” Later, when I was in junior high in the eighth grade, I just happened to wander into the backstage area after school one day and a friend of mine yelled, “Come over here, I need help with this dimmer.” I quickly discovered a great outlet for whatever creative urges I had. Ultimately, I wound up getting several degrees in theater. When I was finishing my bachelor’s degree and working on my master’s, I was in a classical repertory theater doing Shakespeare and Moliere. I was a stage director when I got pulled into my first opera in St. Paul, Mi nnesota. They said they wanted me to direct but since I didn’t know anything about opera, they asked me to come in and assist them as a stage manager while I learned the ropes. Well, nine years later I was still a stage manager! When you get right down to it, grand opera, Shakespeare and classical theater are so similar: it’s metric, poetic, there’s so much structure and it all really resonates with me. I had seen some of the great actors performing at the Stratford Festival (Ontario) and here I was, meeting people like that in opera. I had the great opportunity early in my career to work with Beverly Sills and other major stars and just being around talent like that is so enervating, and when you find yourself a part of this artistic movement, it is unbelievably gratifying. I can still stand in the wings during a performance and cry, especially when you have the kind of really great talent like we have here in Dallas.

Calvin: You must also feel a certain amount of pride, knowing that the success of these productions is as much due to your team as it is the singers and performers onstage.

Gage: Oh, absolutely!

Calvin: So, what remains, John? What would you still like to do in opera that you haven’t yet done?

Gage: Open a new theater. That’s real easy (to answer), the Winspear (Opera House) is out there and I’ve been a part, a small part, of that project since my first meeting with the consulting company about our needs and requirements in about 1994. This building will be very functional. We’ll be able to have two or three operas physically present at the same time: in the air, on the floor and in storage and still be able to move all of it to one side and make room for a ballet company to come in for three or four performances. The Winspear Opera House will accommodate all that and more; it’s just so exciting! And it’s closer than we think. It’s a huge undertaking to move into a new facility.

Calvin: Well, we’ll just put all of that on your capable shoulders, John.

Gage: (laughing) Just my share, thanks!

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