TRICKS OF THE TRADE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21244, 27 January 1931, Page 16

TRICKS OF THE TRADE.

THE STAGE-MADE STORM. How they manufacture thunder and lightning, “do ” snowstorms, and bring down artificial rain in grand opera is ao longer a secret to 10,000 Chicagoans, says the Christian Science Monitor. Whole audiences have been taken methodically behind the scenes this summer where the “ weather man of opera ” has explained his tricks. It has all been a unique venture in manufacturing a larger clientele for grand opera by gathering in a select section of the public, conducting it back stage, and showing it the tricks of the tirade. An audience behind the in, the off season, it is hoped, will be an audience out in front when winter comes. Assembled in the rose-tinted seats of the magnificent auditorium, parties watched the 16-ton steel and asbestos curtain gradually rise. A bare stage! Bare walls and bare floors with only innumerable pulleys visible. Shirt-sleeved stage hands came forth to set up the scene. The sky of non-wrinkable Irish linen was let down from the ceiling. Whole sections of the floor were lifted and tilted, making a basis for hills and valleys on which were spread green grass, shrubs, and a path leading to a castle. Treetops were suspended on copper wires which had been rubbed with lemon juice to make them invisible.

A storm was brought on by John Twcddle, the chief electrician. Photographs of clouds were projected on the cyclomera. Streaks of lightning jagged the sky when a little tin plate. containing small holes like pin-pricks was raised and lowered in front of a machine. Thunder arrived when huge steel balls were rolled up and down through metal tubes. Actually wet raindrops came down, but no splashing or pattering could be seen or heard, for this might detract from the music. The little drops were 'carefully directed to land on two copper screens one above the other, one to prevent the splash and the other the patter. Not satisfied with being merely spectators, the audience filed up on, to the huge stage which is high enough to envelop a 14-storey building, and were given a close-up insight into things operatic. Looking out over the footlights, they discovered two holes in the floor near the front stage which were explained as the prompters’ boxes. They were shown the dressing rooms of the prima donnas with their multitude of mirrors, and were told that 700 people could be dressed at one time in the nine floors of dressing rooms,, all reached by elevators.

Down the steps the erstwhile audience travelled to the basement, where were stored painted scenes all .rolled up, numbered and tagged for 18 different operas. Next came the library, where 10,000 scores of music had been deposited.