A man is standing in front of a wooden strip holding a circular saw. Chips whirl through the air, the saw screeches. Peter Buchheit stands in the midst of this hustle and bustle. He is not distracted by what is happening around him. Work like this is quite normal, here in the carpentry workshop of the Bavarian State Opera.
The articulated lorry takes you to the place of the performance.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
To get to the carpenter’s workshop, however, you first have to go around a white truck. It stands in front of the entrance to the workshops in Poing, with the writing on the side Bavarian State Opera. Pass the truck and go through a roller door into the assembly hall. Here you are greeted by a constant noise level. The reason for this is a multitude of noises: sawing through wood, grinding metal, the rattling of wagons being pulled through the halls loaded with materials. However, it is not yet possible to see what or who is responsible for the noise in the assembly hall. Only a collection of cube-shaped steel constructions is stacked here. They are part of a new stage set. However, the untrained eye cannot tell exactly what the steel cubes are supposed to be screwed together for.
Large stage parts are also welded together in the Poinger workshop.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
A steel spiral staircase leads from the assembly hall to a small room. It’s quieter here. Computer screens sit on tables in the center of the room. It is the office of a total of four designers and the workshop manager Peter Buchheit. He is responsible for 76 employees who are divided into five trades and build the stage sets for the Bavarian State Opera. Locksmiths, carpenters, decorators, theatrical painters and stage sculptors can be found in the high-ceilinged halls that stretch out on all sides of Buchheit’s office. But still: the area is not really big enough. “We have a lot of space here and yet we still manage to reach our limits due to the masses that we produce,” says Buchheit.
Workshop manager Peter Buchheit is responsible for 76 employees in Poing.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
The workshops of the Bavarian State Opera are one of the largest in Germany, producing for only one opera house. Stage sets for about 15 premieres are made in Poing every year. Sometimes they work on five productions at the same time. So organization is at the top of the list of priorities. If everything is not planned very precisely, the timing will not work and the projects will not be completed. If something gets too much, part of the work has to be outsourced.
Scenes for up to 15 performances are created in the large hall – at the same time.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
“That’s our model. Our rough timetable,” explains Buchheit, pointing to a paper poster hanging on one of the walls in his office. First, the model is handed over, then a volume model of the construction is created. In the building rehearsal, the planned stage design is tried out with cheap materials and it is checked whether it corresponds to the stage designer’s idea. This is followed by the plan submission, the workshop submission and then construction begins. “And at some point in the rehearsal phase there is the technical equipment, the entire set is set up on the stage in two days.” What Buchheit summarizes in just a few sentences means about a year’s work for the workshops. That’s how long the lead time is that is needed to turn an idea into a finished stage design.
It takes about a year from the plan to the model and on to the finished stage design.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
Proper planning is also crucial when it comes to labeling the individual components. In order to bring a stage set from the workshops in Poing to Maximilianstraße in Munich, it has to be dismantled and transported individually in trucks. Everything that is to be transported onto the stage has to fit into a 9.5 meter long, 2.5 meter high and 2.5 meter deep container-like lattice box. “Otherwise,” says Buchheit, “we won’t get it out the door and we won’t get it into our warehouse.” Labels on each piece ensure everything goes in the right place when the finished project is reassembled on stage.
Here is a painting for the stage background.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
From the office it goes into one of the work halls. Spread out on the floor is an enormous piece of fabric on which a painting is gradually being created. Past this in another hall is the joinery.
Good things need tools: screw clamp racks in the joinery.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
The workshop manager stops at a workbench and points to a piece of wood painted steel blue with elongated recesses. “Here, the set designer wanted shutters. That’s rather time-consuming for us. Of course, the set designer wants light to shine through and cast a nice shadow on the floor. Plus: From a distance, the viewer must be aware that this is a louvre window is,” he explains. The effort to build the right louvre window would have been too great, so the louvres were milled out of the wood with a CNC milling machine. And something else is noticeable when he turns the window frame: “It’s only important that it looks nice from the front, it doesn’t matter from the back.”
Workshop boss Peter Buchheit with a window for a stage set. What makes it so special is that only the front side is worked out, the public doesn’t see the other side.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
Not only window shutters can be found in the vastness of the Poinger workshops. There are parts of a rock floor, individual pieces of furniture and plastic tiles. There are even legs at the bottom of a shelf. Not real of course, plastic legs. They, too, were once in demand for a production. “Everyone was allowed to try out and model,” says Buchheit. Sounds easier than it is, the whole thing involved a lot of manual work and is said to have been quite time-consuming. “You don’t always think that, but in a leg like that there’s easily three weeks of work for a person, you shouldn’t underestimate that.”
Sometimes plastic legs are also used on the stage, a model builder works on a piece like this for a good three weeks.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
However, a few legs made of plastic are by no means the greatest challenge that the workshop staff of the Bavarian State Opera have had to face. A replica of King Ludwig II’s carriage in the Rosenkavalier is particularly memorable for the workshop manager. “There are 10,000 craftsman hours in this carriage alone,” he reports. When the carriage appears during the performance, there is an extra round of applause. Also the stage design for the ballet Alice in Wonderland took a lot of work. But the effort was worth it: “So Alice in Wonderland was really special. It’s a stage set, when you see it in the ballet, you never forget it,” says Buchheit. Seeing a finished product like this at the dress rehearsal after months of work fills the workshop with pride. “It’s quite something special to be able to work here,” says Buchheit.