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February 17 - March 16, 2018
A PRT proceeds in fits and starts. Scattered Lyric staff from the top
on down watch the proceedings in a state of high alert, scribbling endless
notes and calculating what it’ll take to get the show ready for the final
dress rehearsal and opening performance.
A few seasons back, Marina Rebeka’s tsunami of petticoats
inadvertently swept up a chair and dragged it across the stage during
La
traviata’
s PRT. The soprano recalls, “The dress I wore for Flora’s ball was
so huge that they had to redo it several times, calculating how heavy it
was, so that it wouldn’t drag me to the floor!” When Violetta faints after
Alfredo insults her, Rebeka worried she wouldn’t be able to get back to
her feet while managing the massive gown, which weighed “around 8kg.”
Adjustments ensured no artists (or set elements) were harmed in the dress
rehearsal and performances.
An artist’s schedule may necessitate arriving late in the month-long
rehearsal process
-
sometimes just before the PRT. Lyric’s recent Calaf,
Stefano La Colla, wrapped up performances of
Nabucco
at La Scala on
November 19, arrived in Chicago Thanksgiving week, and jumped in the
metaphorical deep end with the
Turandot
PRT on Nov. 27. Annotated
score in hand, assistant director David Toulson guided the tenor through
the staging, paving the way for a smooth dress rehearsal and successful
U.S. debut.
For last season’s
Les Troyens
, a late cast change brought mezzo-
soprano Susan Graham to town for Lyric’s brand-new production and
company premiere of Berlioz’s epic opera. Graham had portrayed Dido
previously in Paris, New York, and San Francisco, but had to learn her
way around the new set in costume for the first time during the PRT. “I
have absolutely no recollection of it, since I was thrown into it basically a
day before!” Graham recounts. “I was just trying to put one foot in front
of the other, which is probably why Tim was up there so much, helping
me learn the staging at the eleventh hour.” That would be director Tim
Albery, who barely left the stage during the marathon rehearsal.
In this season’s new production of
Die Walküre
, concerns about
the stability of Hunding’s table
-
upon which Brandon Jovanovich
(Siegmund) leapt at a full run
-
caused a brief halt to the first PRT’s first
act. (Extra-long operas, and sometimes new productions, get two PRTs.)
Director David Pountney, associate director Rob Kearley, and assistant
director Katrina Bachus joined stage manager John Coleman onstage
to assess the situation. Technicians checked the hidden mechanism to
ensure Elisabet Strid (Sieglinde) would be able to firmly secure the table
after rolling it into position. The leap provoked astonished gasps at
every performance as the lanky tenor sang passionately while making his
boundingly smooth move.
Jovanovich recalls the PRT’s “table incident. Elisabet had only a few
moments to push it into place and then depress a ‘knob’ on one of the
drawers that activated an air release system used to lower and raise the
table. She hadn’t depressed it fully. The second issue was with placement,
as the location of the table was once too far stage right and the ‘field of
love’ pasture couldn’t move because the pulley system was inhibited by
the table. Then the table was too far stage left the next time and I could
barely reach over to pull out the sword. Both of these were resolved and
never bothered us again.”
The vagaries of stage fog reveal themselves during PRTs. Jovanovich
remembers that in Lyric’s new production of
Rusalka
, “when Ana María
[Martínez] appeared in Act Three at the pond, the first PRT had so much
fog onstage that I wouldn’t have been able to see a car with headlights.
She was back there somewhere, but we needed to find a balance between
(Left) Petticoat junction: dresser Terese Cullen with oversized undergarments for Marina Rebeka’s big scene in Act Two of
La traviata
, which accidentally consumed
a chair during the PRT; (center) director Tim Albery and assistant director Katrina Bachus onstage for the
Les Troyens
PRT to work through the staging with Susan
Graham (Dido), who had just joined the cast; (right) technical adjustments during the PRT for
Die Walküre
ensured that Brandon Jovanovich (Siegmund) could
JOHN SALYERS
TODD ROSENBERG
CORY WEAVER