Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Cultural Cooperation

I talked yesterday about last weekend's performance of The Abduction from the Seraglio by the Arizona Opera.  What I didn't mention is that after most of their afternoon matinees the opera company holds a "Talkback" session where the audience can interact with the director, the conductor, and some of the performers.  We didn't stay for the Talkback this time, but we did hang around after The Pirates of Penzance back in October.

The most interesting thing we learned was that Arizona Opera belongs to a group of opera companies that borrow sets and costumes from each other.  That makes a lot of sense; not only are sets and costumes expensive, but they also take up a lot of storage space.  Why not keep them circulating around the country until they are needed again by their owners?

Armed with this information, I checked the fine print in the program for The Abduction from the Seraglio, and sure enough - there at the bottom of the page showing the schedule were the following paragraphs:

"The scenery for The Abduction from the Seraglio was built by Artefact/Michael Hagen Inc. for L'Opera de Montreal and is owned by Arizona Opera.

"Costumes are owned by the Santa Fe Opera."

Pretty cool.  I wonder where they're going next.

"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. " ~ Charles Darwin

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