Recently, at one of the Boston Lyric Opera dress rehearsals of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Boston Globe photographer Josh Reynolds was hovering about backstage, prolifically photographing nearly everything that crossed his path: people sitting in hair and make-up; chorus members primping one another; ASMs doing final checks; supers reading the newspaper; techs reviewing cue sheets; props being set; wardrobe making adjustments to costumes; costumed singers making adjustments to wardrobe; spike marks being moved; entrances; exits–you name it, he probably photographed it.  What happens backstage at a larger show like this one is an amazing orchestrated feat.  The number of people and objects in motion backstage at all times, the management of timing, the nearly foreign language of the cues, the audible communications–it’s really another show occurring simultaneously with what is transpiring onstage.  Think, perhaps, of Noises Off. 

At one point during the first half of Act II, whilst in the wings, I ducked into the prop … Read more »