Part 369: The Machinery of the Grand Opera, 1897 (second section)
Here is the second of three posts of “The Machinery of the Grand Opera” by E. F. Keller:
“On the afternoon that all this interior working of the Metropolitan Opera House was being inspected by the writer, a rehearsal of “Carmen” was being held. One of the bridges was in use in the last act of the opera. It was lifted to a height of perhaps twelve or fourteen inches above the stage level, and eight or ten horses at a time were ridden over it at a gallop without producing so much as a tremor.
The bridges are used not alone for such purposes as the one described, but also in producing mountainous and rocky scenes. Any section of any one of the bridges can be lifted separately and held in position by steel pins; to the front of these elevations are attached painted pieces representing rocks, trees, etc., and their perfect security is a very important item, as the artists need have no other fear of falling platforms or other dangers commonly associated with built scenes.
Those who are familiar with the machinery of the stage have seen, either in actual use or in published illustrations, what are termed stage braces.
These are long, sectional pieces of wood, with a sort of hook at one end and a piece of steel at the other, placed at such an angle that when the brace stands upright the steel lies flat upon the floor, where it may be fastened in place with a screw. These braces are erected behind the scenery to hold it in place and keep it from toppling over; as there is quite an angle from the point where they are screwed to the stage at the bottom, they take up a great deal of room and are constantly being tripped over by people who are wandering about or crossing the stage in the semi-darkness.
At the Metropolitan there are a number of upright posts, rigged with counter weights, that may be pulled up through the stage to any desirable height. To these the scenery is attached, with the advantage of saving space and also of making the scenery as firm and solid as the side of a house. This is a comparatively new contrivance that has been brought to its present state of perfection by C. D. McGiehan, the master mechanic and carpenter of the establishment. It was, indeed, Mr. McGiehan who built this stage, and who is quite naturally proud of it as the most perfectly constructed and appointed institution of its kind in the world.
One hundred and eighty sets of lines are used in hoisting and lowering the scenery of the Metropolitan Opera House.
The making of these lines involved the use of one hundred and ninety coils of rope, each coil being about twelve hundred feet in length. Several truck-loads of these coils were brought to the stage door at the time the work of fashioning the lines was begun. On some of the modern stages of the country – as for instance, the Lafayette Square Opera House in Washington – the scenery is all operated from the stage by a series of counterweight cables so nicely adjusted that a whole scene may be lifted out of sight by one man. In building the stage of the Metropolitan Mr. McGiehan preferred a different system, and while the scenes are counterweighted so that they may be easily handled, the work is done entirely from the fly galleries. The wings and set pieces are handled by men on the stage itself.”
To be continued…
