Simon Boccanegra (1857) ~
The Royal Opera House 1997

For many straight plays a separate set and costume designer is something of a luxury, but in many instances with large-scale opera it is a plain necessity. Here things were considerably complicated by matters entirely out of our control.

2 May
Plans are well advanced at Covent Garden for what is known as Boccanegra ’57. This is to be a rare production of the 1857 version of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra which is normally performed in the 1881 version. Part of the logic of this production is that Placido Domingo will sing the role of Adorno. And whatever Domingo will sing gets produced. In fact he’s about 30 years too old for the part but what the hell, this is opera! Of course it’s my job to make sure he looks half his 62 years. Also cast are the Russian baritone Sergei Leiferkus in the title role with the relative newcomer American Soprano Kallen Esperian as Amelia.

The director and set designer are once again Ian and John. The three of us of have now been worked as a team on over 20 productions all over the world during the past 12 years, ever since Ian persuaded Peter Jonas into letting him use what had been planned as a revival budget for Cav & Pag [Cavaliere Rusticana by Mascagni & I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo] at the Coli[seum, home of English National Opera] as the budget for a whole new production. All three of us pulled out every stop and Ian charmed everyone into believing it would be possible. And lo! a brilliant team was born. I’ve done more than a dozen other productions with John and different directors, such as Peter Hall, so we all know each other pretty well.
Boccanegra ’57 will be the last new production before the ROH closes for 2 years for rebuilding. Because of this there’s a great deal of uncertainty in the House, as at least a third of the staff are to be laid off. Morale has not been helped by the abrupt resignation this week of Geni Macintosh as Chief Executive, who had been brought in to sort out the chaos left by the dismal Isaacs regime.

In fact the comings and goings reported in the Press are every bit as convoluted as the plot of Boccanegra, which I’ll try to summarise. The opera is set in Genoa in the 14thC when the city was ruled by opposing groups of patricians and plebeians. The conflict is personified in Jacopo Fiesco, a city father, and Simon Boccanegra, a famous and popular corsair who, prior to the opera, impregnated Fiesco’s daughter Maria. Imprisoned, Maria dies giving birth to a daughter who is adopted by the Grimaldi. On his election as Doge Boccanegra banishes Fiesco. In Act II, as an uprising led by Fiesco approaches the city, Boccanegra is poisoned by a rejected suitor of Amelia Grimaldi (whose paternal, but not maternal origins, have been discovered after many subplots). Amelia’s true-love Adorno suppresses the insurrection on the dying Boccanegra’s behalf, despite the fact that his own father was killed by Boccanegra. Fiesco and the dying Boccanegra come face to face just before Amelia and Adorno’s wedding feast. They are reconciled and Boccanegra reveals to everyone the identity of Amelia’s mother. If you think that’s complicated, just be grateful I left the subplots out!

Design considerations are affected by a dramatic problem inherent in the story, especially in the early version, which may well have been part of Verdi’s motivation in rewriting it: this is that the eponymous hero dies and the opera ends with him being succeeded by Adorno. Therefore there’s a problem with the balance between them and the degree to which the costume designer can assist with placing the dramatic focus: for one bestrides the stage but then fades, while the other practically arrives from nowhere just before the end. While most of this is down to the performers, the costumes can really make or break their efforts. So it’s a bit like the axiom of good tailoring: nobody should notice the clothes because they should throw the focus onto the wearer.

The costume budget is £45,000. This sounds like a lot of money until you see what it has to cover. There are 6 principals who require three costumes each as the action covers a time-span of twenty years. The original budget was drawn up on the basis of a chorus of 50, but conductor Mark Elder has expanded it to 66, for all of whom the drama requires two, sometimes three costumes. Additionally there are 11 actors and 6 dancers. So we rapidly reach 185 costumes and counting. Each principal’s costume cannot possibly cost less than £1000, so that leaves only about £150 per costume for the remainder. When you bear in mind that a tailored frock coat costs £250-500 at 1997 prices, and a reasonably unshowy 19thC dress £800-1200 you see how tight things are. In normal circumstances that wouldn’t be quite as bad as it appears since there is a certain amount of ‘below-the-line’ assistance (that is, when things are made by the in-house wardrobe) as it’s normal practice to charge only the cost of the fabrics to the show budget while the wages are part of the fixed overheads. But the ROH Wardrobe has decided that only Placido Domingo’s and Kallen Esperian’s costumes are to be made in-house. Since everything else will therefore have to be made by out-workers all their fees will have to come directly out of the budget.

A further headache is that we have been instructed to create a production which can be revived. This means we can’t save money by hiring … not that you ever can hire that much for Opera singers as they tend to come about four sizes larger than actors (upon whom the stock sizes of the various hire companies are based). Finding one size 16 costume in a hire store is difficult enough, let alone enough of a chorus to produce any kind of a uniform result. So we have to rely on the ROH’s stock of costumes from ‘dead’ shows, with the exception of some Traviata crinolines we’ve been allowed to borrow. The costume ‘mortuary’ is conveniently situated in a remote Welsh valley. Why? Don’t ask. The only bit of good news is that we’ve got Alan Watkins as Costume Supervisor, whom I’ve worked with at Stratford and elsewhere. He really is the tops, and if anyone can bring it in on time and on budget it’ll be him.

All these limitations had the effect of freezing my imagination, and so in the earlier part of the year I had great difficulty in actually getting down to designing the costumes. Not only were the budgetary limits ridiculously tight but Ian, John & I took a long time to settle on the best period to set it in. Ian was emphatically against the 15thC as the costumes of the period consist of men in tights, floor-length scalloped sleeves and huge upside-down bucket hats. Tho I quite like the sleeves I do rather agree about the hats and the tights. We all felt that modern costumes weren’t appropriate – 1950s’ Verdi has been done to death recently by Jonathan Miller’s Rigoletto and several others – which left us with the period of composition, 1857, as the only workable alternative. But a further problem existed for me: knowing the kind of powerful emblematic statements John is coming up with these days for his sets I felt realistic 19thC costumes would just look too frail and fussy. During March I still felt too hemmed in by the problems to see a way forward, but then I thought of an Italian painting by Pellizza representing the Risorgimento [the unification of Italy of which Verdi was a passionate supporter] which depicts a large crowd of working men and women wearing simple 19thC clothes in shades of raw and burnt sienna striding purposefully forward in a beautiful light. It seemed to have just the right feel about it, so I did a few sketches and showed them to Ian with a copy of the painting. He was immediately enthusiastic, and so our central idea or Concept rapidly emerged as a Verdi-esque statement featuring Garibaldi, his red shirt brigade and a revolting populace.

The other obstacle to my actually getting on with the designs for Boccanegra is that thanks to the new agent I was on location with Basil -the film of a Wilkie Collins novel- for the whole of March, and therefore had no spare creative powers to apply to the opera. In theatre or opera it’s relatively easy to find time to design a second production while rehearsals are in progress for the first one as after the fabrics are chosen the designer is only required for fittings from time to time until the show goes on stage. But film-making has a completely different rhythm. The camera generally turns from about 0800, so by that time all the actors and extras must be costumed and made up – which means that the Costume department is often at work before dawn. However, after a mad scramble in the semi-darkness anyone not required as stand by on the set is free to prepare for forthcoming scenes, deal with administrative tasks and fit actors due later in the schedule. Unlike theatre where the actors are generally only available for fittings between 1000-1700 owing to evening performances, films are a 12-hour-day 6-day-week, so even if the time existed, hope of finding the additional energy for getting one’s head around anything else in evenings or weekends is slender! That having been said, once the look of a film is securely established and the production is running smoothly minute-by-minute supervision by a designer becomes unnecessary. But on Basil, as shooting was nearing completion and all the principals’ costumes were established I was able to slip away to the dining marquee or my hotel bedroom and draw Boccanegra like one possessed!

9 May
I am now putting colour on the sketches as Ian always finds it difficult to ‘see’ pencil drawings, and what emerges is a carefully colour-coded scheme which is beginning to look very good. In such a complex plot, it’s essential to ensure that the colours work like team jerseys. Our townspeople and peasants are to be in shades of terracotta, working through venetian red and purple to deep blue for the upper classes. Boccanegra himself retains a sumptuous deep red, not just to remind us of his plebeian origins but also because the Doges traditionally dressed from head to toe in red, like cardinals. Some colour archetypes are too ingrained in the psyche for one to ignore.

11 May
Alan calls me to discuss scheduling. He says there’s a miserable atmosphere in the theatre because one of the choristers has just thrown herself under a train. They’ve been laying off staff in preparation for the shut-down, and she had just received her notice. What’s even more tragic is that she was the mother of a young child.

18 May
Thank heavens for mobile phones! I call Ian who’s directing Cosí at Garsington, to find out what he’s thinking about ‘the prisoners’. The stage directions indicate that a boat-load of African slaves is unloaded in Genoa who are persuaded to perform an exotic ethnic dance – the Verdian tambourines at full rattle. Unfortunately our boat-load is only 3 couples! It has been decided to bypass political minefields by calling them captives. I was rather hoping that they could be proud trophies, the unspoiled spoils of war, but Ian would rather they look sad and lonely in contrast to the gung-ho jingoism of the chorus. Perhaps there’s a way of combining these ideas - proud but sad, exotic and lonely, politically correct and disturbingly imperialistic? I shall have to have a trawl through Tilke’s Costume Patterns for a basic shape and then see what can be done with bleach to achieve a faded, sad exoticism … and hope that what emerges is a shining example of the real design process: ie, the designer has one idea, the director an apparently opposing one, so rather than agreeing to a spineless compromise a third idea is grown from the best bits of the two original viewpoints. And in theory everybody is happy … unlike what happened in Glasgow.

Ian says he feels that Boccanegra needs a special robe to die in. This is a real nuisance. Naturally I shall enjoy designing it, but our budget is already stretched to overload and there isn’t that much time to make it either. In fact most of the conversation is taken up by Ian’s fury at Garsington for having the gall to send him a bill for £120 for his own first-night tickets! Can you believe it? Not even that most rapacious of institutions, the Met, has yet thought of charging production staff to attend their own premieres! It reminds me of the story of the screenwriter whose film was finally released. Not having heard from the producer for more than a year he phoned his office to ask for a couple of tickets only to be told by the receptionist “Tell him, we paid him for his expletive-deleted script, now he can pay us for his expletive-deleted tickets.”

Ian declares he won’t go. With such aggravation any hope of slipping in for a preview appears to be out of the question. Pity, as I’ve loved the piece ever since I did it at the Met with Kiri Te Kanawa in 1981. I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time and have sometimes wondered if that’s why she’s now a budding musician.

9 June 1st Day of Rehearsal
The unaccustomed pleasure of gardening distracted me from packing until the last minute, as a result I forgot the new drawings and had to go to Cornellisens and buy paper, gold ink and a set of calligraphy pens to redraw the forgotten sketches. In fact my re-done Boccanegra-as-Doge is a distinct improvement on my first sketch. The calligraphy outfit is to be used for Boccanegra’s ‘dying robe’. The velvet will be dyed a brown paper colour with a deep border dipped and shadowed in dark blood red. I have a meeting about this with the dye-room, and write blocks of medieval looking letters interspersed with boldly scripted initials on the red bits in the newly purchased black ink and picked the capital letters out in gold. Hopefully they will interpret the sketches rather better than Maria’s landscape-painted shawl, which does not impress me and will probably have to be done again.

Ian Judge gives an excellent introductory Team Talk to everyone. I can see well over a hundred bodies in the room before losing count. John Gunter’s model of the set is extremely striking and altho Ian was initially rather taken aback at suddenly seeing my new drawings he liked them a lot and gave a very encouraging introduction explaining the ideas behind the costume designs – which always makes it much easier to deal with the performers in the fittings when they start trying to object to things or wanting to bring in ideas of their own. As the whole enormous opera only has two weeks’ rehearsal the scheduling of everything is critical. To make matters worse Domingo is only joining for the last week.

11 June
There’s a rumour flying about that Domingo may cancel. I don’t know if it’s true or just because he’s due in on Friday 13th. He may not be the entire reason that we’re doing the 1857 version but he’s certainly the reason why the entire run is sold out! I’m told the cover has a magnificent young voice and is very handsome, so maybe a new star will be born … much as Joan Sutherland was all those years ago with Lucia di Lamermoor.

12 June
The rumour mill says Domingo has a cold and has cancelled a recital in Berlin today. Everyone is on the edge of their seats to know what this means. It’s a bit like it must have been in great houses in the 18thC with everyone below stairs trying to guess when their Lord was coming.
Boccanegra himself is Sergei Leiferkus whom I costumed in 1990 in the title role in Prince Igor, or Prince Ego as my son named it. He was intensely chippy because he came directly from the authentic Russian tradition, and as far as he was concerned that was the only way to do it. He exhibited little willingness to engage with or to trust the overall design concept. Even seven years later he still seems to take the 19thC view that how he appears on stage is his own business, not that of the costume designer. His manner suggests he regards us as an unnecessary inconvenience beneath his notice, grumbling about almost everything that isn’t as he had imagined it. One day I catch him slipping out of the stage door to take Kallen out to lunch just when he’s due for a fitting and I practically have to take him by the ear to get him into the fitting room. Such is the schedule that if any fittings are missed it throws everyone out later on. I suppose part of his problem is that despite having the title role he knows he isn’t the star. The on dit is that the resident Wardrobe were determined to have his costume made by an out-worker at all costs.

13 June
I phone Ian from Wiltshire at 9am to try and find out what is going on and even he doesn’t know if the world’s most famous tenor will be at Westway Studios at 10:30. But by 10:35 news of his arrival has reached the wardrobe and Alan calls me to get the midday train.

I get in to the ROH at about 1pm to find the House abuzz. Domingo’s fitting is at 3. At five past three his assistant arrives to say that Signor D is partaking of coffee. Altho one part of me thinks it absurd to get excited about meeting yet another performer, I find myself anticipating the encounter keenly. After all it’s not every day you’re in the same room as a living legend. Twenty minutes later someone hears the lift doors down below and rushes into the fitting room to let us know he’s coming. Everyone’s blasé mask slips badly, tho they all try to appear quite calm.

A few moments later, the lift doors clank and in sweeps the great man himself surrounded by his entourage – Signora Domingo and the assistant followed by his personal repetiteur bearing the score. Mercifully the fitting goes extremely well. Placido likes everything, looks wonderful and says all the clothes are comfortable. The house tailor had done a great job. More -or at least as- important, Signora Domingo approved – as we had heard that she is the final arbiter, and her disapproval could render all a designer’s best efforts useless. After discussion we all feel that the £250-worth of purple suede for the second coat would be less perfect than an elegant linen one – whose colour I suggest should match a lovely scarf that Signora D had about her neck.

19 June
The curse of the Scottish Play strikes again. The premiere of a new production of Macbeth which was to precede ours has been cancelled. Various stories are circulating privately and in print about what happened, but at the heart of the saga there seems to be a toxic combination of managerial incompetence and ill will by the staff. I’m told that the ROH has made so many of the most senior stage-hands redundant that there is even less love lost between them than before - when there was none. So if anyone in the crew saw this disaster coming they chose to remain quiet about.

It’s being said that noone had checked sufficiently carefully to see if the remaining ‘B Team’ could strike Rigoletto and Boccanegra to build Macbeth in the available time. Moreover there was apparently nobody from senior management in the theatre when they were doing the fit-up on Sunday to take emergency executive decisions. So all that work and all those hundreds of thousands of pounds have been poured down the drain. The sets & costumes are to be stored for 4 years. Anthony Ward, the designer, won’t let the costumes be seen without the set, and some of the soloists are saying they’re too angry to do concert performances – so that would appear to be that!

20 June
Except of course that it wasn’t! I’ve just received next week’s Calls and a Macbeth costume change rehearsal is scheduled for the concert performances. Of course we’re all anxious to see if there’s a knock-on effect where our production also becomes a pawn in Opera House politics. Today I’m watching the last chorus costume rehearsal in Westway Studios in order to be certain that the costumes will be capable of doing what the action demands, and thereby avoid too many nasty shocks at the Piano Dress on Monday, when there’ll be nearly 100 people on stage and little chance of adjusting anything major.

23 June

The First Piano Dress Rehearsal has just finished. It was spread over two mornings, Monday & Wednesday as Macbeth’s General Rehearsal was Tuesday AM. It’s been very good really. Only one remake. Leiferkus of course – who thought his wonderful leather coat emphasised his bum. In fact the problem was that he hadn’t got a proper collar or wig. So in a break someone zoomed out to buy a shirt in Cecil Gee’s sale and a neck tie to go with a practical long-haired wig. Even as I write another coat in cheap needle-cord with ego-sized shoulder pads is being finished off .

O help! Domingo has just come on stage saying that the soprano must have a wedding dress. This is true, and in a properly funded show she would have had. We all go into a huddle with the producer after the rehearsal. To noone’s surprise money is magically found for a new frock for Kallen, since it’s ‘keep the star happy’ time. Just fancy that! I should have had a word with him about some of the stuff I wanted.

Anyway I hastily sketch a new wedding gown. It’ll be a quick change so rather than make Kallen scramble into a new tight-fitting dress I design a great flowing robe that will go on over her blue dress. We remember that there was some lovely soft sage green silk dupion with a simple printed gold pattern at Henri Bertrand’s and someone is sent in a taxi to buy 10M. Then, using the other velvet coat as a pattern, The cutter and three stitchers stay late and miraculously …

25 June
… the next day, a beautiful gleaming new robe appears at the General Rehearsal with its peacock lining just picking up an echo of the blue of Kallen’s main dress. Very pleasing.

28 June First night.
I’m not usually tremendously excited by them. I get my adrenaline rush from the relief at getting through the Stage Rehearsals. In some ways premieres are a bit of a downer for designers. You’ve seen that it all works and your part of it is over. Now it’s completely up to the performers and the stage staff. But it is impossible not to have a certain sense of anticipation because Domingo just is such a wonderful performer. Off stage he is slightly stooped, but once he gets on stage he really does shed years. Perhaps not 30 years, but a very good 20!

Anyway, Maxwell came up and he thoroughly enjoyed it. Afterwards we were invited to Orso’s courtesy of the ROH. The crush in Floral St was like coming out of Customs at Heathrow when a pop group is due. We walked out between crash barriers with police holding back the crowds. A suitably long wait for star’s appearance in the restaurant gave us a chance to chat to get acquainted with other members of the cast, whom normally I rarely meet with their clothes on! There were a number of other well-known faces in the restaurant but every head turned when the Placido entered with his wife and sons (one of whom is a spitting likeness). There were even some discreet flashes from cameras. After an excellent meal with appropriate Genovese wine we retire to my brother-in-law Gabriel’s house in Surbiton, which he and his wife Jill kindly allow us to use as a London pied à terre - and without which life really would be literally impossible.