Confessions of An Opera Star

The lights dim, and a hush falls over the audience. A trumpet fanfare pierces the silence; suddenly a spotlight beam, crossing the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera, illuminates the figure of a young man in a high priest's robe: Matthew Diller '81. A tenor aria fills the air; the audience stirs, and is moved to rousing applause. Diller turns to the audience, strides downstage, and then exits to the roar of the crowd--followed by high priests number two through twelve. From the wings, he watches the tenor take his bow.

With over a hundred performances to his credit, Matthew Diller has graced the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera with such immortals as Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti, Leontyne Price and Placido Domingo. He has known the great and the near-great, and also the not-so-great. Yes, Diller is one of that special corps of performers so essential to every opera--the extras. For what would the French revolution be without an angry peasant mob? Who will hold back the crowd in Boris Godounov when it surges to crown him king? For that Matter, who will do the surging? The extras, the unsung--and unsinging--mainstays of any operatic performance. And Harvard junior Matthew Diller, for five years as an extra himself, saw it all. This is his story.

Q: Mr. Diller, how did you get your start in the Metropolitan Opera?

A: There's really a very simple way of getting into the Met as an extra: to find out the name of the assistant stage manager, who does the hiring, and to call him up and ask him.

Q: Aren't there any other requirements such as musical ability, familiarity with the opera, or previous acting experience?

A: They need males above a certain height, that's about it, actually. Timing has a lot to do with it, because if they're beginning a production which needs a lot of people, it's possible they'll just take you over the phone.

Q: What inspired you? Were you an opera enthusiast?

A: At the time I was not so keen on opera--I was 14 or 15 years old. It was a family plot, actually. The idea was to get as many people in the Diller family into the Metropolitan Opera as possible. I was the only one they took.

One Sings, The Other Doesn't

Q: If an extra never gets to sing or speak, what are you principal activities on stage?

A: Because most of the roles are servants and soldiers--certainly 60 per cent of the roles--a lot of it is just standing on stage for 25 minutes or a half hour without moving. Because servants or soldiers tend to be rather stiff and withdrawn, standing still is crucially important. And half an hour is long. In the last scene of [Wagner's] Lohengrin we had to stand with an 18-foot pike for half an hour, supposedly not moving--in full armor! It was boiling hot because they make the costumes look real--they don't make them to suit the climate. And you had to use both hands to keep the pike from falling over, because it was very heavy and really 18 feet--the real length of a pike. It was sheer torture.

Q: Besides standing still, what are the other attributes of a good extra?

A: The ability to stand still for tremendous periods of time is among the most important, actually. Also at some point, the ability to take cues from a variety of sources. If you're standing on stage for 20 minutes, and at one point, you have to make a move, there are several ways you can tell. You can know visually--something happens. You can tell vocally--somebody sings something and you move. The harder ones to take are musical: the orchestra plays something and you move on that.

Q: Do any roles require real acting?

A: At some point, the ability to look natural on stage matters. Obviously in the 75-people range it doesn't matter at all, but when you get down to four or five extras onstage with two principals, it becomes quite important. Some extras will take it very seriously. I was more of the school which did not consider it a great art and took it much more casually. But when I was soldier number 14 in the first act of [Saint-Saens'] Samson and Delilah, that did take some acting.

Q: As soldier number 14?

A: Soldier number 14 is a particularly good role because soldiers number 1 through 12 are killed in the first ten minutes of the opera. Soldier number 14, the privileged one, is the messenger's assistant. The messenger comes to tell the high priest that Samson has killed soldiers number 1 through 12; that's a very good part because I move alone on stage, clearly, conspicuously, to my own individual, personal set of cues. During the high priest's area of vengeance against the Jews, I had to show tremendous hatred toward the Jews, and that took a bit of acting.

Q: Do directors generally pay close attention to how well you're playing the part?

A: Different directors will have different styles. Some will work a lot with the extras to get them to do the right emotions. There are others who will just assume that it all gets done. As far as I can tell, it works either way--it's not that sophisticated that you have to devise a "concept."

Q: How complex are the motions you have to portray? Are they generally things like fear, happiness...?

A: Yes, it's usually on that level. "Look afraid." "Hear a sound, look around." "Look worried and disturbed." Fear is a big one. Happiness comes up occasionally.

Molto Allegro

Q: What are some great happy moments?

A: A happy scene might be during the last act of [Wagner's] Meistersinger, laughing at Beckmesser, who is a comic character. Or, another one from Samson and Delilah, the Bacchanale scene which ends in Samson's knocking down the pillars, is a drunken orgy. You're supposed to be doing whatever you want, so you wander around and slap people on the shoulders in no apparent order onstage. I was talking to people and revelling and having a good time.

Then there are the stealthy moments. Another example from Samson and Delilah: I was one of the blinders, the people who blind Samson in the second act. There's a storm, the stage is dark--the ten of us have to prowl around the stage before we sneak up and pounce on him.

Q: Was he shaken up?

A: Yes, he was "visibly" upset. After that is the famous scene where he knocks the temple down. Samson stands between two pillars at the center of the stage. They have pillars with wire frames and canvas made to look like rock, and they hang from the ceiling. There are two men crouched behind the pillars, which are fake, so when he pushes his hands out, the two men do something and the pillars fall together. Then all these fake rocks fall, and I get hit by a rock and fall dead. But then, the frightening thing is, one of the two real pillars on the side comes crashing down across the front of the stage. It's made of solid wood, and it's about 30 or 40 feet high, so it's a real thousand pound pillar, and they let it freely drop. The ballet people have to scamper out of the way. That's really a fear moment.

Q: Sounds like a pretty convincing death scene.

A: The Siege of Corinth has a similar scene at the end, after we kill the women, The city burns--there was smoke on stage, if I remember--and again there were rocks. Unfortunately, the falling rocks were a lot more prominent, because the stage was better lit, and they bounced a bit. That didn't look too cool.

Q: Were you in any other great death scenes?

A: That's it, actually. I fared pretty well, I must say.

Q: Weren't you nervous at all when you looked out into the audience?

A: I never even saw the audience.

Sans Opera Glasses

Q: Ah, you mean you were so confident you never noticed them?

A: No, without my glasses it was totally pitch black, like looking out into a cavern. I'm very myopic--my entire career at the opera revolves around trying not to break my neck because you can't wear glasses on stage. In Aida, for example, I was a torchbearer in the big triumphal march. You walk out, you walk downstage, you hit the front of the stage, and the stage drops very quickly because the set is elevated. As you hit that point, you enter the lights that cross the front of the stage, and you're blinded. So one step too far and... I did 30 Aidas, and each time I was a torchbearer and each time I was sure I was going to break my neck. One or two times I stumbled on stage, and let me tell you, it makes a lot of noise.

Q: Are there any regulars among the extras?

A: There are three or four extras who'll be in practically every opera, then a circle of 15, and then a full corps of 30 or 40. Finally, for mass operas of about 75, they will drag in people from wherever they can. The assistant stage manager might get them from a certain college or theatrical organization or even the YMCA. For example, in the trample scene of Aida they needed so many people they used some football team from a high school in New Jersey. I, of course, taken as a young recruit, started off on that level, but by the end of my third year I was regularly getting into operas which had only 15 or 20 extras.

Q: You must have been one of the youngest.

A: The extras range from 15 years old--when I started out I was definitely the youngest--to 50. The older ones are more used in roles like "archbishop" or "dignitary" or "boyar." The really hard core people have been there since the opening of the house ten years ago.

A: Do most of them just call up the way you did?

A: No, most of the people are there through connections as friends of older extras. A lot of them are music students or dancers. There isn't much need for females, because most of the roles are servants or soldiers, but when they do need females, they use the ballet corps, because there's not enough work for them. You're selected for parts on a personal basis, and the assistant stage manager has definite favorites. You're paid by the act, by the way, about $5 per act. If you're in every act of a four-act opera, you get $20 for a night. Also, everybody but the extras gets paid more for Saturday radio broadcasts. The extras always considered that slightly unfair, because the ballet, which makes no noise at all, gets more for broadcasts--and not the extras.

Q: How much time did rehearsing take?

A: A new production will rehearse two and there might be seven rehearsals they will ask you to come to, all in the middle of the day. Now what I would do, because I had school, would be to pick about four to go to. If you pick the right rehearsals, you can skip a lot and still be in it with no problem. If you pick the wrong rehearsals, you miss the day, for example, when they give out costumes--that's it, you're through. You get bumped.

Mezzo-Mezzo Soprano

Q: During rehearsals, did you have any contact with the singers?

A: In most cases, the singers are rather isolated from the extras, but I had friends in the chorus. I once met Beverly Sills, though. I was in The Siege of Corinth, a Rossini opera, which was her Met debut. I didn't think she was very good, actually. It was exciting, though, just meeting her. I didn't know what to say--I was a 15-year-old kid, I was terrified. We talked about the weather. She was very friendly.

The ballet, though, did have contact with the singers. One tenor, who is a married man with kids, spent most of his time chasing after the ballet women, one or two in particular. He was very much on the make, smooth and slick.

Q: Did you ever meet him?

A: No, but I knew the ballet girl he was after.

Q: What do extras do when they're not onstage during an opera?

A: Most of them don't even watch the performances. They linger upstairs, they talk. There's a snack bar behind stage where everybody eats and hangs out. We used to play hearts during the performances back in the dressing room. If it was a good opera, I watched every time. I spent so much time sitting on a little stool, tucked away in the wings, watching the performances.

Also, just watching the Met's technical effects is a lot of fun. I think it has the largest stage in the world, and when you look up, you literally do not see the ceiling--top to bottom is something like ten stories. The entire set rolls back and to the sides, so they can change whole sets in the middle of an act. Also, it's divided into several smaller pieces horizontally which can each be set at a different height. The Met is proud of spending fortunes of money because it's not the Met if they have to cheapen it. And in a way, it's a good thing, because it's one of the four best companies in the world, and arguably the best.

Q: Was it ever disillusioning to see the opera from so close?

A: Being up close can sometimes affect the majesty of the performance. For example when, in a pause, you see the heroine turn around, face upstage, and spit. Somehow it destroys the romantic image, and it happens not infrequently. Also, a lot of times onstage the chorus chats. The Met's acoustics are incredible: you can sneeze or speak really loudly upstage, and nobody in the audience will hear it. Nevertheless, the director is not so fond of that.

Q: What are some of the coveted extra roles, the ones reserved for the inner core?

A: One is being a waiter in (Verdi's) La Boheme. The singers go to a cafe and walk off without paying the bill, so the waiters look outraged, another tricky emotion. Verdi's Tosca is a great opera for extras. In the Met production, the extras get to be secret police, and in the end about ten of them get the firing squad. They get to kill the tenor.

Being a juror in (Giordano's) Andrea Chenier is also a good role. It's set in the French Revolution; Andrea Chenier is a poet who's condemned to death, and in the last act there's a trial by a revolutionary court, and everything's in chaos. So we extras really got into being a mob peasant jury--we'd blacken in teeth and wear wigs with hair sticking out, and put filth all over ourselves and make ourselves extra ugly. And then we'd sit in the juror's box on stage and chat and throw things and have a great time. I didn't like the rest of the opera, though, so I didn't watch it. I just did my part and cut out, went back to play hearts.

Q: Have you continued to perform in college?

A: The Met season ends April 15th or so, and then it goes immediately on tour. They go to all the American cities, do concerts in the parks, and then they go abroad. Last year, when they came to Boston, I was in (Verdi's) Don Carlos as captain of the king's guard and had my own spot in the procession. I stood behind the king looking very important while they burned people at the stake. I was also in (Verdi's) Otello and (Poulenc's) Dialogue of the Carmelites.

Q: Have you worked for any other companies besides the Met?

A: After the Met season ended, I was in a very small opera company in the Beacon theatre in New York which did Adriana Lecouvreur by Cilea. It was their first production and it showed. In the ball scene, the ballet dancer was supposed to float in on a platform through the smoke and dance around very ethereally. But they started the dry ice too early, so in the middle of the scene before, smoke started coming up from under the setting and flooding the stage. It was very pathetic. The company has not been heard from since.

That same year I also did the American Ballet Theatre's new production of (Stravinsky's) Firebird. They generally pick really ballet-looking guys, extra skinny and tall, but they picked me anyway. You have to fit into their costumes, and the largest waist on any of them is a thirty. I was not a thirty, but I lied, and appeared at the first rehearsal with many safety pins. My part was to stand on stage during the wedding scene.

Q: If an extra doesn't sing, doesn't speak, and generally just moves around stage as part of a huge mass-what is it that makes being an extra so worthwhile?

A: The real thrill comes from just being on stage where you can hear and see everything from incredibly close up. That's really what makes the whole thing so fantastic--you could be standing three feet away from the singer. You get incredible exhilaration: the sound is so fantastic, far better than from the audience. Especially if there's a chorus on stage, it's so full and rich and it comes from all around you. It just sweeps you away. And with most operas, the more you're in them, the more you really enjoy them. I've been in something like 30 Aidas, and each one is thoroughly enjoyable. You can listen to them forever.