by Bill Roddy
In 1937 I began my freshman year at the High School of Commerce, Hayes and Van Ness. I was fifteen. Across the street was the War Memorial Opera House. When the opera season began there was a notice in our school paper "The Bulldog" that the opera needed supers.
Didn't know what that meant but decided to go to the opera house and find out.
A super is a supernumerary and is used in non-singing roles to be part of the crowd. You might be a soldier or a native spear carrier or a snake charmer. More on that later.
I was pretty tall and was offered a job as a super... it really wasn't a job, because you didn't get paid, but it was wonderful.
And 1937 could not have been a better year to be a super with stars like Lily Pons and Ezio Pinza performing at the War Memorial.
At the opera house you went down many floors below the stage to the dressing rooms. The supers were given costumes and were made up. I remember walking the halls and hearing Pinza vocalizing in the distance. He shook the walls. I can still hear him.
I once passed Pinza in a corridor, but remembered the first rule I was given, "Supers must never speak to the stars."
Absolutely my most exciting "role" was as a snake charmer in Lakme. Lily Pons sang the title role. In the second act I was seated with another super behind a basket. I was holding a dummy wooden flute. As the curtain rose I began "playing" my flute in cadence with a musician in the pit. The super next to me pulled on a cord and the cobra rose out of the basket. Then Lily sang the Bell song. Here is a picture of her from the Opera's home page.
Lily Pons Morton Photo That was to have been the end of my story. I thought the San Francisco Opera might like to read it and emailed a copy to them.
A few days later I received an email from Kori Lockhart, who is editor for San Francisco Opera on the web. Kori said she went through their 1937 Lakme photo files and found one of me as the snake charmer. She scanned and emailed it to me.
Here the supers are standing around relaxed, waiting for the curtain to go up. Why I figured I had to "rehearse" my flute, I'll never know. Perhaps I saw the cameraman.
Morton Photo Thank you Kori for giving me such a wonderful link to my memories of long ago.
Bill Roddy
