SF Opera Community Open House

The second annual San Francisco Opera Community Open House for families took place last Saturday.



There was a small army of volunteers, including James Parr above, tending to kiddie arts and crafts tables where you could make coin props...



...along with paper corsages and hats decorated with whatever you wanted, including swastikas.



The best crafter was the boy above whose hat included a paper corsage on top that doubled as a pom-pom.



Inside the auditorium, there were musical demonstrations by orchestra members, soloists, and in the instance above, the San Francisco Opera Chorus, which was fruitlessly trying to get the audience going in a sing-along of the Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffman and a march translated into English from Cosi Fan Tutte.



Erin Neff, above right, explained that she had been a good little girl when growing up but was always getting into trouble "because I was so loud all the time. Now I'm grown up and getting paid to be loud."



Thankfully, the baby above was more interested in absorbing the world around her than making noise.



There were supernumeraries wandering around in costumes, including Tom Carlisle above doing his best Giuseppe Verdi impersonation.



Kimberly Thompson was looking glamorous as usual, and James Crow above reminded me of the season when the opera house was being retrofitted and the company produced Verdi's Aida at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. There weren't enough plumbing facilities to get away with body makeup so the hundreds of extras portraying the Egyptian Army looked like they were from Ireland, with a sea of knobby white knees poking out from warrior kilts.