Opera Omnibus: La Sonnambula (May 1988)

By the time they put on La Sonnambula by Vincenzo Bellini, my involvement with the company during the design and rehearsal phases was nil. However, late in the very week of the production, I created a piece of scenery with a vital special effect that is crucial to the plot at the very climax of the whole opera, and without which the whole story would end in a dismal anti-climax. To find out how, read on...

There were to be just two performances that May, on the Friday and Saturday nights. I received a phone call mid-evening on the Wednesday, the Technical Rehearsal. This is where the cast and chorus go through the motions, and the stage and technical crew do all the scenery, props and lighting changes that they have only just put in place, before the final Dress Rehearsal which here was to be on the following evening, Thursday.

The caller was Ian Tribe, company chairman and thus general sorter-out of difficulties that crop up among the various specialists, who all naturally focus on their own particular concerns and leave someone else to keep in mind the overall picture.

To understand what I did for this production that night, you have to know the story of the opera. La Sonnambula is The Sleepwalker, and the title role is that of a young orphan woman, Amina, who has been fostered by Teresa, the miller of a small Swiss village. Her water-mill is some way from the village centre, but Amina is about to marry Elvino, a local farmer, and everyone is gathering in the village for the occasion. In comes Rodolfo, the feudal lord, returning to the village on the death of his father. He notices the pretty bride, pays too much attention to Amina, and makes Elvino jealous. That night, they all plan to stay in the village inn run by Lisa. Lisa flirts in his room with Rodolfo, but then Amina walks in through the window, in her sleep. Lisa, jealous of Amina first over Elvino and now over Rodolfo, thinks the worst and goes off to warn Elvino, dropping a hankie on her way out. Meanwhile Rodolfo realizes Amina is asleep and leaves her fast asleep on the sofa in his room; he abandons his plan to stay the night and goes off to his family castle. Teresa arrives and finds (and keeps) the hankie. Lisa returns with Elvino, and Amina is woken and denounced for her shamelessness. Elvino retrieves her engagement ring and calls off the wedding! Teresa pleads Amina's innocence in vain.

Act 2. Elvino has decided to pair off with Lisa instead. Rodolfo appears and explains the sleepwalking phenomenon, but rustic Elvino won't believe him either. Teresa produces the hankie and Elvino is ready to despair of all womankind. (This pleases Alessio, a peasant hoping to marry Lisa.) This scene is near Teresa's mill where Amina still lives, and suddenly Amina appears, walking across a structure high up on the mill. Everyone watches, panic-stricken, as something rickety appears to lurch dangerously and Amina walks blindly on, regaining a solid footing safely, where all hear her praying for Elvino and lamenting the loss of his love. Elvino now realizes that the sleep-walking explanation is true, and (prompted by Rodolfo) places his ring back on her finger. Amina awakes to find Elvino at her feet, all rejoice, and the couple are led away to their wedding.

When I arrived at Haslemere Hall (at about 21:00 on the Wednesday), I was shown an ordinary trestle table, standing on the stage at ground level, which was all those preparing scenery had to offer for Amina to walk across. The music at that climactic point, and the chorus lyrics, build up this moment when Amina falters for a moment when the structure shifts and she, oblivious of the danger, appears about to fall to her death in the mill race. The orchestra plays frantically, the chorus sing as with their hearts in their mouths, watching, and Margaret Tribe (chairman Ian's wife, a diminutive lady with a wonderful silvery high soprano voice) was going to have to play the part walking across a six foot length of tabletop barely 80 centimetres off the ground. Hmmmm...

The scenery included two flats, one each side of centre stage. A flat is like an oil painting canvas about 6 metres high, with heavy cloth over a wooden frame, and these flats were painted to be parts of the mill building or Teresa's house. Each had an opening painted like a window or door for bags of grain, about 2 metres from the stage floor. I suggested making a bridge across this gap between the two openings. It had to be about 2.5 metres long. The openings were different widths, perhaps 40 and 60 centimetres wide respectively. They agreed, I took careful measurements and went home.

I found two joists (timber of 100 x 47 mm section) long enough to do the job, and made a platform of the correct tapering width using flooring chipboard. Then I found four planks of thin, hard old wood and constructed on one side (the front) of the "bridge" two pieces of fence about 30cm high, built so that they all pivoted at each end. The supports at the outer ends were fixed, but those at the inner ends, where the two halves of the fence met, could move vertically between a top position where the fence was horizontal, and a lower position where the top just concealed the floor of the bridge. These central ends of the two halves were held in position by a trigger operated by the sleepwalker's foot, so that Margaret, who was of course very wide awake as she "walked the plank", could trip the trigger with her toe at just the right moment in the music. 

I completed this whole job that Wednesday night before I went to bed. It took me till about 2 o'clock in the morning. 

Unfortunately the following photograph, the only one I have found so far of the production, shows the bridge in original position, not after the sides have apparently collapsed.

The next night, Thursday, I took the "bridge" down to the Haslemere Hall and showed it to the stage manager. Then I went and sat alone in the front row of the hall balcony, to see the entire opera Dress Rehearsal. I could hardly wait to see what my invention looked like. The action proceeded with everyone singing below full strength to preserve their voices for the real First Night on the morrow, Friday. There were pauses and ups and downs, but it all went quite well until the end of the 2nd Act. There was my bridge in pace, and now here was Amina (Margaret) appearing at the upstairs window of the make-believe building. The archestral and chorus music built up to the moment, as the chorus stood there singing, facing upstage and watching Amina venturing out onto this supposedly precarious (though actally pretty safe) structure. The time came for Margaret to trigger the "fence" to drop. It worked beautifully, if I do say so myself: the middle of the fence -- the adjacent ends of the two halves -- dropped right on cue with a terrific clatter (just as designed; this was the advantage of using thin, old, very dry hardwood) and it really looked as though the bridge was starting to break in the middle under Amina's weight. In fact, of course, the joists and flooring chipboard were quite sound and the collapse was an optical illusion; nevertheless most of the chorus jumped visibly in their skins. The thing was a resounding (pun intended) and afterwards one or two people told me my device stole the show. Years later I met the musical director for La Sonnambula in the audience during the interval of another show, and he still remembered me as the man whose special mill-gantry collapsed loudly, on cue, and stole the show in May 1988. It's a moment of which I remain reasonably proud.