The only way is Essex as Royal Opera House looks east for past and future of its costumes
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Version 0 of 1. They embroidered the waistcoat of Rudolf Nureyev’s Romeo, perfected the bounce of countless tutus for the corps de ballet and clothed Maria Callas’s Tosca in preparation for her jump from the parapet at the close of Puccini’s opera. But top-rank theatrical costume makers like those at Covent Garden are in perilously short supply, according to Alex Beard, the head of London’s Royal Opera House. At a time when Britain should be making the most of its worldwide reputation for delivering such skills at the highest level, Beard is concerned that the stock of properly trained costume constructors is dwindling. “In the particular area of costume construction, we are finding the right people in increasingly short supply, although there is clearly a big demand for this kind of work, not just here but from abroad,” he said. “The truth is there is a skills gap felt by every musical theatre company.” To meet this need and develop a new generation of costume makers, this week the Opera House will officially open a new British centre of excellence. A degree-level training scheme run with South Essex College, it is the first to be set up in collaboration with a performing arts organisation and is based inside a state-of-the-art costume depot in Thurrock, Essex. Built alongside a new hi-tech store for some of the most famous costumes in theatrical history – including items worn by tenor Luciano Pavarotti and dresses donated by the Russian-born prima ballerina Dame Natalia Makarova – is a bright room full of sewing machines, printing and fabric dyeing apparatus. This is home to the first intake of costume construction students who, on graduation, will fuel the British entertainment industry. “We are acutely aware that we are part of a wider ecology in the world and that we have an obligation to use our scale to ensure we have a strong base of skills across the whole industry,” said Beard this weekend. “The Opera House has had a programme of apprenticeships for general skills for some time, so it seemed absolutely natural to build up the costume-making talent pool for our benefit and for everyone else’s.” On Thursday, communities minister Greg Clark will attend the opening of the centre, which is named after arts philanthropists Bob and Tamar Manoukian. “Having an internationally renowned organisation like the Royal Opera House invest is a real boost for the area,” Clark told the Observer, pointing out that £5m of government investment has gone into the production park and its surroundings. In a hallway inside the centre stands Dame Margot Fonteyn – or at least the dressmaker’s dummy of the British dancer, its 25in waist contrasting unfairly with its neighbour, a dummy modelled on the more substantial frame of opera singer Dame Joan Sutherland. The Australian soprano, known as La Stupenda, performed her breakthrough role of Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden in 1959. Beyond these illustrious figures lies an area that must now stand as the best dressing-up box of all time. Stored in one cardboard case, wrapped in acid-free tissue paper, is the moustache worn by star ROH dancer Edward Watson in Mayerling; in another, Anthony Dowell’s vertiginous Ugly Sister wig from Cinderella; and inside a third is Darcy Bussell’s pathetic, shorn wig from the final act of Manon, once the character has sold her long hair. In another corner are hundreds of boots and shoes for the opera chorus, waiting to be called back on stage, including some gold, laced, wedge sandals from Handel’s Semele that wouldn’t look out of place on a modern fashion catwalk. Lorryloads of costumes from repertory productions have been moved from storage in Wales to the rails of the new centre at High House Production Park, just an hour’s journey from the theatre. These rails are suspended on the shelves of a vast hangar and are reached by a bespoke fork-lift truck, christened Brünnhilde the First. The new building also houses a modern base for three ROH costume makers, released from the cramped conditions of Covent Garden’s on-site wardrobe department. “It used to be a two-day job to get things from storage to the theatre,” said the head of costume, Amanda Hall, as she prepared her small team to make 78 robes for the opera chorus of a new production of Boris Godunov. “We can send things over at short notice now.” The real gems of the ROH collection, priceless and purely of research interest, are stored separately in a sealed temperature-and-humidity-controlled facility. These delicate historic costumes have just been brought from a former base in Dover. Regular visits from pest control will keep out mice and moths, and if there should ever – horror of horrors – be a fire all the oxygen in the room will immediately be replaced by argon gas, avoiding the use of damaging sprinklers. Perhaps the most nostalgic item stored here, at least for theatre historians or for elderly patrons of Covent Garden, is the 19th-century orange-crushing machine which gave its name to the theatre’s fabled Crush bar. Many of these treasured objects will now be available for research purposes and are intended to go on occasional public display. |