From Russia with luck: A day of drama precedes a night at the opera

“Flex-ibil-ity,” says Shari Shanker, with the feigned perkiness of a demented preschool teacher. “That’s our motto here at the L.A. Opera. Flex-ibil-ity.”

Shanker, the opera’s production manager, is standing a few feet from the stage in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It is about quarter past noon on Tuesday; the members the Kirov Opera company were asked to be here at 12 on the dot for costume fittings and makeup. Thus far, no singers have been seen anywhere in the building. This could be because most of them arrived in Los Angeles just last night, some as late as 10 p.m. Or it could be a miscommunication -- most members of the Kirov don’t speak English; most staffers at Los Angeles Opera don’t speak Russian.

Not that it matters. What matters is that the show opera, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” opens here in less than 36 hours. And as of yet, no note has been sung, no movement blocked.

“Isn’t the piano dress [rehearsal] at 1?” asks another member of the opera staff who is not quite wringing his hands.

“One....ish,” Shanker says brightly.

“And the maestro, he gets in today, right?”

“Today....ish,” Shanker says. She utters a high, half-strangled laugh that in other circumstances might be characterized as “mad.” “Flexibility,” she says again, “is key.”

In the tense, expectant quiet, a Christmasy smell of sugar pine spills over the stage into the house. This is the scent of a brand spanking new set. This is the scent of “flex-ibil-ity.”

Months ago, due to budgetary concerns, the L.A. Opera canceled the scheduled Kirov production of “War and Peace” and replaced it with the less-expensive “Lady Macbeth.” Logistically, this was not a problem -- the Kirov is famously self-sufficient, known around the world for its ability to put on a lavish, fabulous opera in a matter of days; many of the ensemble had just performed “Lady Macbeth” this summer.

Then the dock lockout sent the production’s sets, costumes, wigs and props to Japan and things got a little complicated. The costumes and wigs came back to L.A. by air; the sets had to be rebuilt.

Less than two weeks before the opera was to open, Igor Suvorov, the Kirov’s technical director, flew to L.A. with 30 pounds of blueprints, written in Russian of course. Harold “Butch” Conroy, the L.A. Opera’s carpenter, began hitting up the local unions for extra help. As Suvorov and Jeff Kleeman, his counterpart in L.A., began translating, Conroy had two guys cutting corner boards for one whole 10-hour day; another spent a day and a half cutting the boards that make up the face of the set. “He looked like a snowman,” says Conroy, “like a sawdust snowman.”

Conroy, who is a fourth-generation stage hand, figured they’d simply never make it, that they’d be hammering and painting as the curtain rose on opening night. He said this many times throughout the 10 days and nights the crew of 26 worked at the opera’s shop in Santa Clarita, even when it became clear that they were going to finish with time to spare. His brother Tom, who is Conroy’s assistant, just smiled and told him he was crazy.

“I’ve done six Academy Awards sets,” he says, standing on the stage in front of the fragrant, dazzling and very finished set. “It’s a show. The show will go on.”

It is almost 1 o’clock and suddenly there are Russians everywhere -- welling up the stairwells, flooding the corridors, striding across the stage. One man begins marking the floor for props, picking up people’s feet, shoving shins when necessary. The Kirov’s assistant stage manager, a perpetual-movement machine of a woman, slaps the side of a large barrel in which two of the characters will cavort.

“Nyet, nyet, nyet,” she says, waving away a step-ladder brought out for her inspection. Downstairs in wardrobe and upstairs in dressing rooms, the chorus and principal singers need almost no help finding and donning costumes, and soon there are Russian peasant women on the pay phones, Russian soldiers stepping outside to smoke.

A decision is made to forgo makeup and hair until the final dress that evening. “O-kaaay,” says wig master Rick Geyer on receipt of this news. He utters a half-strangled laugh similar to Shanker’s laugh, a sound that will become a hallmark of the L.A. Opera staff as the day wears on. He is used to several full rehearsals, at least two in full dress and makeup. “Just let us know if you need anything,” he says to a member of the makeup crew who speaks “the little English.”

Taking off their street clothes, the three women who will alternately sing Katerina, the leading role, mention, through an interpreter, that they have not worn their costumes in six years. There is a tense bilingual exchange -- everyone involved had assumed that the costumes had been fitted before they had been shipped but, alas, this was not so. And time, it turns out, has been generous to the waistlines of two of the women in a way that will require something more than moving a few buttons.

“As if there were any buttons,” says one wardrobe assistant in passing.

For the next few hours, the singers rehearse, some in costume, some not, the opera staff continues to wonder when exactly maestro Valery Gergiev will arrive, and the wardrobe staff creates extensions with tape and fabric from hems, adds gussets fore and aft.

“Fortunately she wears a shawl,” says Janine Allen, wardrobe supervisor, holding up the one jury-rigged dress. “A big shawl.”

Were the leads upset to learn they had gained so much weight?

“Not so much anguish as you might expect,” Allen says. “Not as much anguish as we felt,” adds her assistant, Daniel Nussbaum, with the laugh.

A few floors above, members of the L.A. Opera League are up to their wrists in chocolate icing and honey-baked ham. At the request of the opera, the league is providing a meal for the company before every show. They’ve done this before for the cast of other shows, but usually just for one night, and never for 280.

“We’re calling it Project Kirov,” says Audrey Hansen, the league’s president. “You know food is such a problem in their country and we wanted them to have a good meal.”

They have on hand 23 hams, pounds and pounds of couscous, rice and macaroni salad, institutional-sized tins of sliced peaches and 15 chocolate sheet cakes. One woman has spent the last two hours just frosting and cutting cake. Hansen can top that; she’s been cooking red cabbage, on the menu for Friday, for almost a week. “My house does have a bit of a cabbagy smell,” she says. “But we wanted them to feel welcome and it freezes so nicely.”

At 5:30, the company breaks for dinner. The musicians have arrived and so, allegedly, has Gergiev -- somewhere in L.A. Still, he is technically here.

“I picked him up,” announces a young woman named Taylor. “The new rule is, if I am here, he is here.” (Backstage legend has it that the last time Gergiev conducted in L.A., the downbeat for the orchestra was scheduled for 7:30; Gergiev arrived at 7:29.)

After so much bustle, the relative silence of the makeshift mess hall during dinner is startling. “I think they must just be exhausted,” Hansen says. “I hope it’s not that they don’t like the food,” she adds with a worried frown.

The full dress rehearsal is scheduled for 7 p.m. and for the half hour leading up to it, it is difficult to imagine that somewhere within this building there is a 280-member opera company. The halls are silent, backstage is silent, the makeup people sit outside the silent wardrobe rooms, waiting, not really knowing what is going to happen next.

“Where is everyone?” asks a makeup assistant. People shrug, they laugh, they have no idea. Again.

Down in wardrobe, they are doing in four hours what they would usually do in two weeks. It’s quarter to 7. “How close are you?” Allen asks one man who is putting stays into a bodice. “Not terribly close,” he says, “but close.”

“Get closer,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be on. It will get pretty by tomorrow.”

“I bet the costumes for ‘War and Peace’ all fit beautifully,” she adds wistfully.

Dress rehearsal starts at 7-ish -- 7:15 to be exact, and the cast appears from nowhere, hitting their marks, their high and low notes, as if they had not been dealing with customs and hotel room mix-ups hours ago, as if they’d been performing at the Music Center every day of their lives.

For a few moments, the L.A. staff too feels like maybe they have reached familiar ground. Not so. Because this is the only rehearsal anyone will get, Gergiev re-does entire scenes, using the different principals. At one point there are three leading men, in similar costumes, standing outside a wardrobe room.

“That’s unnerving,” says Allen, who is delivering a gusseted wedding bodice, hoping for the best. Someone mentions that the Katerina now onstage is wearing white jeans and a sweater.

“What?!” Allen says. “Who is it? Which one? I haven’t even seen her. Why isn’t she in costume? I’ve been so busy with this,” she shakes the wedding bodice, “and I have no idea what is going on. Wait, wait,” she says, holding up her hands, “this is not my problem.”

She takes deep breath. And through from stage right, as if on cue, comes the smell of sugar pine. Flex-ibil-ity.