According to students Nassim White and Daniel Reid, “The tour of the Met opera house was an eye opening experience.”
On May 1st, a select group of WHSAD students and their teacher Ms. Moos were hosted for a backstage tour of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln center. WHSAD students NAssim White and Daniel Reid described the experience:
“The tour of the Metropolitan Opera House was an eye opening experience. Through TV shows and movies you get this false expectation of what a backstage looks like, and this visit destroyed any expectation I had. It was just one person overlooking over a couple of miserable workers, but everyone was working together like a well oiled machine. As we were taken deeper into the building we saw more interesting things, such as the storage facility where they keep the extra props, over 100 plays worth of props. I think everyone on the tour gained a deeper appreciation of the art of prop making after we saw the 3 different workshops the Met housed. It was amazing to see that the props were not imported along with the production, but that they were hand made with each incoming production. To see that each prop was one of a kind, made to order really gave me a deeper respect for plays and opera shows in general. After this experience I developed the desire to see a production at the Met itself, to see all the hard work of the performers, builders and stagehand morph together to create a beautiful piece of living art.”
According to Jessica Price, who is working on set design in Ms. Moos’s class for the upcoming Night at the Armory show, the visit to the Met will help her improve her design work. After the visit, Jessica told Ms. Moos that, “Now I know what I want to do with my stage design– I am going to redo the whole stage tomorrow.”
