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Dressing Moses and William Tell
WALKING into the costume department at
Welsh National Opera is like entering a child’s fantasy world of
dressing up. Boxes are piled on to every shelf with labels
promising a whole range of make-believe from military belts to gilt
buttons and gold braid to feather boas. At one table a woman holds a black jacket to the
light and stitches carefully, at another a colleague is humming along to
the sewing machine. In a little room to the side the milliner is piling
up towers of multi-coloured hats which sprout lace, ribbons and bows. Tailor’s dummies are scattered across the room –
most are empty but some are wearing fabulous costumes covered with
pearlised beading, glittering gemstones and scintillating sequins. On
the floor are piled military boots in a range of different sizes and
shades. On a large table under the floor-to-ceiling
windows, which have the most beautiful views down to Cardiff Bay, are
books and folders packed full of the secrets of shows to come. Within
their pages are elaborately drawn costumes for operas which span the
centuries including Rossini’s Biblical epic Moses in Egypt and
revolutionary adventure William Tell, Bizet’s doomed gypsy tale
Carmen, Mozart’s Magic Flute, Humperdinck’s fairy story
Hansel and Gretel, Debussy’s tragic Pelléas et Mélisande,
Richard Ayres’ Peter Pan and the opera extravaganza Chorus! And all their colourful characters will be
dressed by teams managed by Siân Price. Siân joined the opera company straight from
college as a costume maker in 1979, followed by cutter and has gradually
worked her way through the ranks, becoming Head of Costume in 2008. And
it is a job she adores. “I love putting costumes on stage and seeing how
the audience responds to them,” she says. “We are allowing the people on
stage to create something special which the public enjoy. “And it is the challenge of actually producing
what designers and directors want – the challenge of taking that design
and making it and putting it on stage.” That mo “We like to see the designs as soon as possible,”
says Siân, “because the process can be very lengthy. The start point is
when the designer turns up with a set of designs – and that could be
around 14 months before the show is on stage. “This autumn we are working with Marie-Jeanne
Lecca on Moses in Egypt and William Tell. This is our
third time of working together. The first time we did Mussorgsky’s
Khovanshchina and last year we did Berg’s Lulu. “When I spoke to Marie-Jeanne at the beginning of
her Moses in Egypt design process she was talking about how it was going
to be all colour. The colours are very bright and they will be in that
colour from the tip of their toes to the top of their heads – even their
faces will be coloured.
“Marie-Jeanne has very distinctive designs and
she comes with some very specific ideas. All the images on the fabrics
for Moses come from Chagall paintings – it’s all about the swirls, the
paintwork and the colour. “She sent me reference books galore and gave us
lots of Chagall images and we then needed to recreate these ideas on a
three-dimensional person.” Although Marie-Jeanne is designing the costumes
for two WNO operas which are touring together, the costumes will be
poles apart in terms of inspiration, colour, shape and fabric. “William Tell is very different from Moses,” says
Siân. The colours start quite dark, almost drab, but then, because it’s
all about the characters being repressed and gradually gaining freedom,
they gradually get some colour in their Swiss elements. “The clothes and fabrics are very utility with
some screen printed and others digitally printed so they are different.
Marie-Jeanne has a pretty clear idea of what she wants, a kind of
work-wear, calico petticoats and things but they need to be in fabrics
that will hold the dye and then the prints. “In a perfect world we would have so much money
we could have everything made just for us but that is not the reality
and it’s all about finding a way to create everything within your
budgets. For the soldiers’ uniforms in William Tell we found a Chinese
website where we bought repo uniforms. We then stripped them down to the
bare minimum and created a whole new look with new buttons, collars and
braid. “Also for Tell, we are creating some boars’ heads
for some of the characters which are very intricate and made of painted
fibre glass. We have to make sure they balance just right so that the
characters can wear them and still sing, see the conductor and move
around on stage. You have to make it work.” And the task is immense. Depending on the
show,Siân and her team could be dressing more than 50 people in the
cast. “And of course it’s more than that because they
could be wearing two or even more costumes in each show. And for the
principals we could have a number of casts. So for example for Carmen
this autumn we have three Carmens and understudies. And for each show,
you have to make sure that she looks as good as she possibly can.” Bearing in mind the team, which is made up of 10
full time and part time staff as well as freelancers, will be working on
three seasons with around eight separate productions across the year,
they are literally creating hundreds of costumes at any one time. Because WNO are constantly creating new works,
the costume team also needs to be on its toes in terms of recycling. “Once the costumes are not needed for a show they
live in our stores. We might hire out a production with the costumes or
they may stay there. The props and costumes are on three floors. “We’ve got a costume from our recent Così fan tutte which started life as a Flora dress in La traviata in the eighties, then we worked on the design again for the youth opera and the skirt was the mother’s dress in The Red Kite (a Youth & Community production) and then in Così fan tutte we have a bearded lady and we used that skirt again by adding to it. A basic piece of costume can just go round and round. Peter Wedd as Don Jose and Alessandra Volpe as Carmen. Picture: Jeni Clegg “There are certain items which you see as an investment. So if we
have tail suits made, we don’t say they are specific for a show. They
are stock items which can be used in other operas like Die Fledermaus
and Eugene Onegin and La traviata “And there are operas like La bohème, Carmen
and Madam Butterfly which come round again and again. We have
pans full of Butterfly costumes because each time a Butterfly comes
she’s a different shape and Butterfly has been around since 1978!” Once the company has used them to finality, the
costumes can find alternative lives and have been hired by BBC, Warner
Bros (Sherlock Holmes 2 – A Game of Shadows), National Theatre
Wales, and National Trust to name just a few. “If we get to a point where we think we can’t use
something again then the youth opera may use it or they may feature in
our youth and community projects,” says Siân. “When it is deemed that we
really can’t use it again, we will hire it out. So a costume is never
ever really dead.” As well as creating costumes from scratch, the
team also ensures revivals are kept fresh. “I enjoy doing revivals, especially if it’s a
show you really enjoyed and you like working with those people,” Siân
says. “We do sometimes make some changes to a show when we revive it,
particularly if it has been hired out elsewhere and another company has
made changes to them – we may keep those changes or do other
alterations. Doing revivals is very different from new shows because you
know how it all works together.” With the constant cycle of the seasons, Siân, who
originally knew nothing of opera, has worked on tragedies and comedies
set in every time and place – and she couldn’t imagine herself in any
other arena. “It is such fun doing so many different shows and
working with so many designers,” she says. “And you never really lose
that sense of pride at seeing your work on stage and so many people
enjoying it. It makes the challenges all worthwhile.” Diane Parkes WNO’s
autumn season at Birmingham Hippodrome features Carmen on Nov 19 and 20,
Moses in Egypt on Nov 21 and William Tell on Nov 22. For ticket
information call 0844 338 5000 or click on
www.birminghamhippodrome.com |
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in the spotlight may only be fleeting but every costume has to be
perfect and will have taken hours of work.
When a show is ‘deaded’, as we call it, then the costumes are up for
grabs. So this Carmen uses pieces we have used in other previous
productions such as previous Carmens or Traviatas. We then dye them or
re-dye them or make other changes to them so they fit the designs for
the new production.