The 2008 festival season is now complete. Fortunately, I was able to drive up the hill on Sunday, August 10th to participate in the end-of-season festivities. Every year the final performance is preceded by various activities including; acknowledgements of the personnel that work behind the scenes, awards for the young artists, any special tributes and the official closing of the festival with everyone singing “Auld Lang Syne”.

I thought it would be interesting to capture the backstage atmosphere so I inconspicuously made my way through the door labeled “authorized personnel only”. I’ve always enjoyed observing the different disciplines working together to make an opera performance a success; interestingly, for Susannah, the performers’ costumes were similar to that of the stagehand’s clothes (overalls and such) so it wasn’t always obvious who were performers and who was supporting them.

In any case, there is something to be said about watching a performance through the curtain seams. In some ways, it makes you feel as if you are actually part of the making of the show.

After the final encore, several association members made their way on stage to acknowledge various behind-the-scenes personnel, followed by awards given to several young artists. With everyone backstage being onstage, I decided to move to the auditorium since the ushers had opened the exit doors.

At one point, the Mayor of Central City made a special tribute to John Moriarty. He said that by his calculations John had probably walked from his summer house to the opera house over 20,000 times in the last 30 years and the city felt that it was only fitting to rename the street to “Moriarty Lane”.  I think everyone in the audience agreed.

Later at the cast party, I met with members of the Central City Opera board, the association staff, musicians from the orchestra, friends of the opera, principle vocalists and young apprentices. I think everyone was glad the season was over, but my sense is that they will soon be reminiscing the many good times the season provided them and longing for it to start up again.

On the way home I started thinking about this blog posting when out of nowhere the most colorful rainbow I had ever seen appeared. Because my camera was still in my pocket I was able to take the picture above. The rainbow made me think of all the people that make up the performances in the Central City Opera House and somehow seemed to capture the entire year and boil it down to a single beautiful metaphor.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at August 12, 2008 and is filed under BRAVO!!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.