• October 04, 1999
• Vol. 52
• No. 13

Skeleton Crew

A Monumental Opera Stage in Austria Thrills—and Chills—Audiences

What with cell phones, beepers and latecomers, stage actors have plenty of distractions. But for the cast of Verdi's opera A Masked Ball at this summer's Bregenz Festival in Austria, the main distraction is the stage. It floats in a lake, so actors have to take a bridge to reach it. And it's massive: some 8,050 square feet of wood and steel. "1 had to get very fit," says actor Stephen O'Mara, "to keep my breath while singing and running around." At one point a 77-foot plastic skeleton pushes O'Mara toward a coffin. "The audience gasps," he says. "To see it suddenly come alive is a real surprise." The 50-ton, $5.5 million set was created by British directors and designers Richard Jones, 44, and Antony McDonald, 48, to "make audiences feel uncomfortable, disrupted, even purified." Purified or not, 176,800 flocked to the monthlong festival, making it a bone-a fide hit.