Whenever a Met performance is broadcast over the Toll Brothers–Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network or the Met channel on Sirius Satellite Radio, one of the busiest places in the opera house is the radio booth on the sixth floor, where the intermission features and interviews are produced.

For the season premiere of Die Zauberflöte, radio host Margaret Juntwait was representing the Met at a local radio gala, so producer Mary Jo Heath took the reins. Mary Jo knows this score backwards and we were happy to hear her angle, especially when Met Director of Music Administration Craig Rutenberg came up to talk to us at intermission. Craig was full of interesting information about the workings of the music department and especially about this year’s upcoming productions. Among his more daunting tasks: finding a new Sanskrit diction coach for the Met premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha this spring. All in a day’s work…

We also got to speak to Richard Horowitz, a timpanist with the Met orchestra since 1946 (!). Richard is also noted as the ultimate baton craftsman, making the indispensable appendages for many of the world’s great conductors from scratch. We had no idea baton-making was such an arcane art form. The conversation got a bit surreal at times, and Mary Jo had to remind the audience Richard was talking about batons and not conductors (“Most of them are pickled, you know”).

Adrian Noble’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth opens tonight at 8 P.M. Zeljko Lucic and Maria Guleghina star as the power-hungry title couple who will stop at nothing on their way to the throne. John Relyea sings the doomed Banquo, and Dimitri Pittas is Macduff. Met Music Director James Levine conducts.

Zeljko Lucic (Macbeth) and Maria Guleghina (Lady Macbeth)

The refugees

Macduff (Dimitri Pittas) crowns Malcolm (Russell Thomas) King of Scotland

Photos: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

1 day until the Macbeth premiere!

The story of Macbeth, whether it’s set in medieval times or as a post-World War II thriller, involves several fight scenes. For the Met’s new production, these are staged by fight director Malcolm Ranson. “It’s been a difficult journey, as with all big productions,” he said during a break from rehearsals last Thursday, “but things are coming together very well.” What is the job description of a fight director? “Basically,” Ranson explains, “I choreograph all the action scenes. That includes discussing with the director how he wants to stage them, and then working out absolutely all the moves. First and foremost, your job is to protect the singers and the actors, to make sure they’re safe on the stage. The second part of the job is to make the action fit the director’s concept of the piece, and then hopefully create something that looks really violent. That’s the tricky bit.” In Macbeth, there are several truly violent moments: the murder of Banquo in Act II and the battle sequence in the final act, which includes the fight between Macbeth and Macduff. Ranson has done a number of operas, but straight theater takes up most of his time. Working with singers instead of actors makes for an additional challenge, as he points out: “Generally, the physical side of the work is harder for singers, particularly if they have to sing straight afterwards. The problem obviously is the amount of breath control that a singer needs to hit all the right notes. Whereas for an actor, it doesn’t matter if he’s acting out of breath because the audience has seen him fight. Fortunately, in the fights that we have [in Macbeth], none of the singers has to sing right afterwards, so we’re actually able to do them at a realistic speed.”

For Ranson, working on stage comes naturally. “I used to be an actor,” he explains. “Well, I started life as a drama teacher, and I learned fencing from the age of 12. Then, as an actor, I often did the fighting for the productions I was in. Later, I met an English fight director and ended up assisting him on several shows. It was over a period of time that eventually the fights took over, and it just reached a point when people stopped asking me to act and kept asking me to do fights.” It’s a job that is certainly keeping him busy, in more than one way: “I go back to Germany after this to revive a musical of Robin Hood.” He adds, laughing, “I go from the sublime to the ridiculous.”

Fight director Malcolm Ranson in rehearsal.

The fight between Macbeth and Macduff in the final act of the opera.

Performance photos: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera