Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll find out why the chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera House are at their lowest right now. We’ll also get details on Mayor Eric Adams’s veto of a bill to decriminalize penalties for street vendors.
“This is the big event,” Randy Sautner said, standing in the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House.
Sautner, the crew chief in charge of electrical maintenance at the Met, was not waiting to see the curtain to go up on “Turandot” or “Don Giovanni.” He was about to give the go-ahead for seven spiky chandeliers to come down from the ceiling — a production in its own right, with more than a dozen stagehands in supporting roles. Here’s a synopsis:
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Act I: The stagehands lowered the chandeliers, maneuvered them onto little carts and lashed the carts where they could not roll off. One scene took place on the roof of the Met, where three stagehands stood in a hatchlike opening, operating the winch that sent the chandeliers down. A recitative over two-way radios involved phrases like “ready to roll” and “nice and slow.”
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Act II: In the lobby after a coffee break, a Windex-and-water solution came out and the stagehands began cleaning the chandeliers. The nearly 400 bulbs have to be changed. The same goes for another set of chandeliers nearby, the ones that climb 65 feet toward the ceiling as the house lights dim before each performance.
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Act III: The chandeliers will go back to their usual places, ready for the Met’s fall season, which opens on Sept. 21 with Mason Bates’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.”
For an operagoer, it’s jarring to see the chandeliers in the lobby so low. It’s even more jarring to see them in the auditorium where a tall person in the row in front of you would be, blocking your view of the action on the stage.
‘Sputniks’ that outlasted the space race
The chandeliers are wood-and-metal spheres that have been called “sputniks” ever since the Met opened in 1966. Legend has it that a prototype was constructed with toothpicks and a potato. On that first opening night, with their sparkly moons and satellites radiating in all directions, they were a signal that the Met had left behind the Gilded Age look of its old home on Broadway and moved into the space age.
They added some modernist whimsy to the formality of the Met. Whether they outshone the audience remains an open question. The socialite Marylou Whitney wore a tiara with 1,900 diamonds and 75 rubies that night. The cosmetics mogul Estee Lauder arrived in a gold-and-diamond crown that one article said was “suitable for Queen Elizabeth II.”
Before long the chandeliers became symbols of the Met itself: Its gift shop sells sputnik cuff links, sputnik necklaces for and, for $84,350, a custom-made one the size of the chandeliers Sautner’s crew was guiding into place. Smaller sizes are also pricey: The 24-inch model goes for $23,750.
Sautner has a history with chandeliers. For three years, he operated the chandelier in “Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, which meant that his job, night after night, was to see that the chandelier crashed on cue in Act I. “I went from chandelier crasher to chandelier caretaker” when the Met hired him, he said.
Actually, though, the chandelier in “Phantom” was only supposed to hover over the floor after it went down in the crash scene.
Still incandescent
The Met’s chandeliers were refurbished in 2008. The bulbs are still incandescent, not LEDs, but Sautner said that 60-watt replacements had become hard to find. The Met stocked up before a federal ban on some types of incandescent bulbs went into effect two years ago. When the supply runs low, he said, the Met will have to investigate more modern bulbs that can mimic the old ones.
“You don’t think about it as a homeowner,” he said, “but there’s a certain look you’re only going to get from the exposed filament of an incandescent bulb.”
Sautner said this after leading the way across a catwalk above the stage and onto the roof, where five stagehands were operating a power-driven winch that unspooled the wires holding up the chandeliers in the lobby. The stagehands also fed electrical cables to keep the chandeliers illuminated while the cleaning is going on. Sautner said a different set of winches raises and lowers the sputniks in the auditorium, where the power cables are painted red to match the walls, the carpet and the seats.
One of the stagehands was Tshombe Selby, who has several jobs at the Met. He is a tenor in the chorus and said he had been going over the score for “Carmen”; there is a rehearsal next week. He also runs the titles during some performances. There is a person reading the music who says, “Go,” he says, and he changes what appears in the little window in front of each seat.
Ninety feet below, in the lobby, another stagehand, Michael Breedlove, cautioned his colleagues to keep an eye on the cables, lest they get tangled in the rods on the sputniks. This was not the first time he has worked on bringing the chandeliers to eye level for the annual maintenance. He has worked at the Met for more than 30 years.
So what is his favorite opera?
“I like ‘Bohème,’” he said. “It’s got everybody in it. It’s got a lot of color, a lot of costumes. It’s got a horse that comes across the stage. I watch it on TV when it comes on Channel 13.”
He watches the Met on television?
“I’m backstage” during performances, he said, “so I don’t get to really see it to appreciate it.”
Weather
Expect a mostly cloudy day with a high near 76 degrees and a chance of showers in the morning. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low near 65.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Sunday (Tisha B’Av).
The latest New York news
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Lawyers for Sean Combs request a new trial: The music mogul’s lawyers requested that his conviction be vacated or that he be granted a new trial that focuses exclusively on the prostitution charges on which he was found guilty. Combs was also tried on sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges, of which he was acquitted.
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Thousands mourn slain officer: Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Officer Didarul Islam, who was killed in Monday’s massacre, had been posthumously promoted to detective first grade. Mayor Eric Adams was among the other speakers at a service at a mosque in the Bronx.
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A veto from City Hall: The mayor vetoed the City Council’s rejection of zoning changes essential to Bally’s bid to build a casino in the Bronx. He said his move was not an endorsement of the $4 billion casino project, which, if built, would result in a $115 million payout to the Trump Organization.
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An outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease: At least 22 people have fallen ill and one person has died in the past two weeks in an outbreak probably caused by bacteria sprayed from a cooling tower in Central Harlem.
Mayor vetoes street vendor bill
Mayor Eric Adams vetoed a bill that would have eliminated criminal penalties for street vendors shortly before it was to go into effect.
The City Council passed the measure on June 30 by a vote of 40 to 8, with three abstentions, enough to override a veto. It would have become law automatically on Thursday if the mayor had taken no action, but late Wednesday, he blocked it.
“Any legislation that removes the N.Y.P.D.’s power to enforce the law should deeply concern everyone,” a spokesman for Adams said by email. Adams, a former police captain, added in a statement on Thursday that “our law enforcement officers play a vital role in keeping our streets clear of unlicensed vendors and protecting small business owners who follow the rules from being undercut by those who don’t.”
At present, street vendors who lack permits or are accused of other infractions can face misdemeanor charges, with possible fines of up to $1,000 and jail terms of up to three months.
Councilman Shekar Krishnan, a Democrat from Queens who sponsored the bill, said that Adams had “picked a fight that he cannot and will not win” and said that the City Council would vote to override the veto next month. “Mayor Adams, once again, is helping Donald Trump to implement his anti-immigration agenda, and he is selling out New Yorkers to do so,” Krishnan said.
METROPOLITAN diary
Best life
Dear Diary:
I was at a matinee of “Wine in the Wilderness,” when I overheard a woman offering her friend a review of Jonathan Groff’s performance in the musical “Just in Time.”
“Jonathan Groff is living his best life,” she said. “He sings, he dances, he takes off his clothes.”
“Should I see it?” the friend asked.
“If you like that sort of thing,” the woman said.
— Helen Ellis
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Luke Caramanico and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
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