Backstage with the Bohemians - Part 4: Beading, buttons and brocade

Musetta's shoes
created by the Opera Australia Wardrobe department
to the designs of Julie Lynch

It's all about the frocks as Caroline Baum visits the Opera Australia Wardrobe to check on preparations for La bohème.

With only a couple of weeks to go until opening night of La bohème in Melbourne, I’m snooping around in the wardrobe and wig department of the Opera Centre.

The building used to be a jeans factory so it’s appropriate that clothes are still made there.

Seeing all the costumes up close, hanging on racks and labelled for each production you appreciate all the details of brocade, buttons and bows. Walls of ribbon and trim bring out the haberdashery fetishist in me. The workroom is a large, quiet, light-filled space, where steam irons sigh quietly as they press on.

Lyn Heal heads a team of thirty-five cutters and seamstresses, plus a milliner. She scours the world sourcing the right materials for each opera production. Boots are made in Germany by stage footwear specialists who work for all the major opera companies. Beading and embroidery is done in India. An archive of fabrics means that when productions are revived, costumes can be refreshed and run up without a hiccup.

There is a 'bible' for each production, a collection of sketches of each outfit. Each of the eight soloists in La bohème has between one and three outfits, not to mention the second and third casts, plus the forty-eight members of the chorus, most of whom change three times. The look is a mix of grunge and burlesque, with pieces having to be broken down to make the glamour a little worn. Think Otto Dix and George Grosz and you get the idea.  Lady Gaga would love it in here, there are all sorts of feathers and pointy breasts and padded bits, feathered cloaks, waistcoats and breeches and bodices, capelets, and petticoats.

Upstairs, Opera Australia's chief wigmaker, Philip Cox, is threading individual hairs onto a wig.  It’s eye-watering work. (No wonder he wears specs.) I can understand how finishing around the hairline might need to be done by hand, but the whole head?! Apparently it doesn’t look  right if done by machine. It will take about nine days to complete. He has a whole storage system full of plaits bought by the kilo as ponytails in Russia.  He also has a collection of plaster moulds of individually labelled heads (like shoe lasts) which are casts of singers who are regulars with the company, so that wigs can be made for them without needing extra fittings - unless their heads have swollen with fame in the meantime.

Read the next installment of 'Backstage with the Bohemians', or skip to part 1, 2, 3...5, 6.

Book tickets to see La bohème at the Sydney Opera House, from 31 December 2012.

Visit our La bohème Costume Gallery to see a selection of Julie Lynch's designs.  Or, read more about the challenges of creating the costumes for La bohème in an exclusive interview with Wardrobe Buyer, Miranda Brock.