Operatic Passion

By day, Victor Ralys is the organist and choir director at St. Casimir’s Church in Los Feliz. But come night--or some afternoons--he’s onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, unleashing his inner prima donna as an extra with the Los Angeles Opera. Over the last 13 years, Ralys has graced an impressive 54 productions in every walk-on role imaginable, from a grave robber in “Faust” to a royal guardsman in “Tristan und Isolde.”

His career as a “super” (supernumerary, or walk-on performer) started with a gig in a 1990 production of “Falstaff.” A new L.A. resident by way of New York, Ralys was paying the bills answering phones at the Music Center. On break in the green room one day, he spotted a posting for one of the open auditions the company holds a couple of times a year for opera extras. The rest is teatro history. “Some do it one or two times for the experience, but I was hooked,” says Ralys, 49.

After “Falstaff,” in which he portrayed a servant and a villager disguised as a bishop (supers typically play multiple characters in one production), came “Don Carlo,” “Porgy and Bess,” “La Traviata” and an honor roll of classics. But Ralys still counts that small part in “Falstaff” as a career highlight. In it, he had the opportunity to exercise his comedic prowess by pretending to lose his footing. “The whole place was going crazy. That was truly a great moment.”

Ralys knows fellow walk-ons who work as actors, teachers, accountants, carpenters, mechanics and even pool cleaners. (Pay can range from $50 to $150 per performance.) Ralys studied piano for a few years, but “quit when Ed Sullivan died because I realized that I would never play on his show.” Initially a computer science major, Ralys eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in music performance from Queens College in New York and has made a career of directing choirs.

During the past couple of seasons, Ralys has secured more significant roles, as the double of principal singer Samuel Ramey in “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” and “The Tales of Hoffman.” But that doesn’t mean he yearns to be the world’s fourth great tenor. Supernumerary work has its rewards, after all. As Ralys points out, referring to one of his big scenes in “Samson and Delilah,” “where else can you throw Placido Domingo down to the ground and still be hired for the next production?”