What does a Propmaster for an opera company do?

One of the many pleasures of attending my 50th high school reunion was reconnecting with Lori Harrison. Lori had a career that culminated in serving as Propmaster for the San Francisco Opera.

A tiny sample of Lori’s always a-typical days:

• What do you do when you’ve sourced two drive-able vintage Mercedes for an opera and one of the singers plunges through a windshield during dress rehearsal?

• How do you dislodge the massive Tannhäuser set for an Athens production that mistakenly gets stuck in the port of Cairo?

If you’re like me, you’re wondering what else a Propmaster does. I interviewed Lori, and share some highlights here. (Edits are mine.)

A Propmaster is generally responsible for hand props, set dressing, weapons, food (real and fake), some special effects (such as falling snow/rain/glitter, mechanical tricks, or puppetry), plants/greenery, furniture: that sort of thing.

At the San Francisco Opera, the Prop Department also handles flooring when soft (groundcloths, dance floor, etc.), orchestra pit setups (in house and on the road, including large instruments like harps), furniture that moves around the company’s facilities, general maintenance of the stage and surroundings (sweeping, mopping, garbage), live animals onstage (dogs, horses, etc. – even a snake once), lobby displays and event support, and anything else that comes up.

Lori started working on shows in high school and kept on working on shows. “Eventually people started paying me, so I never stopped.”

Lori’s long and circuitous journey to the San Francisco Opera included many unexpected turns and multiple around the country. She had a stint in film as well, and learned a lot in the great school of Experience.

Lori loves how the job calls on “EVERY” possible skill and interest, the necessity for research into the history and setting of each opera, the role of props in bolstering the director and designer’s vision for each production, the complex teamwork, the travel, the spectacular live music and getting to know the musicians, and, of course, taking people on tours of the opera house.

How to solve the above “crises”—

• Find a replacement windshield and get it shipped pronto,

• Send folks to Cairo with hard cash, get the sets on a boat to Athens, and spend 42 hours straight loading them in [the decision to go to Cairo was above Lori’s pay grade, but she was on call to help load in the sets].

I’m breathless imagining Lori’s adventurous workdays, especially when compared with the solo, sedentary life of a writer!

I’m so grateful to English music critic and author Jessica Duchen’s thoughtful consideration of DUET FOR ONE in her Substack. (Speaking of opera, Duchen’s post includes a review of a recent production of Die Valkyries in Munich.)

Duchen had this to say about my book: “Fiction in which the author clearly knows music, musicians and the music world inside out is a rare gem, and this, from a writer who was a violist herself, is one of the most thorough I’ve seen, besides being beautifully written.”

Thinking ahead:

I’ll be in New York during the first week of October, and I’d love to come to your book club to discuss either DUET FOR ONE or THREE MUSES (or both). Please let me know!

Thanks and love,

Martha

P.S. ICYMI, here’s my most recent newsletter/Substack, “What’s in a film?”

Buy DUET FOR ONE

Buy THREE MUSES