On Saturday, February 16, the Canadian Opera Company held a call for supernumeraries (non-speaking extras or "supers") for our spring productions of Lucia di Lammermoor, Salome and Dialogues Des Carmélites. We were looking for over 100 people to cast as townsfolk, nuns and angry mob members and over 230 people showed up to try and make their (silent) opera dreams come true!

 

Our hard-working costume department spent four hours measuring each of our potential supers to see if they were a better fit for the costumes in each of the three spring operas.

Associate director Didier Kersten and COC production coordinator Shawna Green line up our potential nuns for the 14 nuns needed for Poulenc's haunting opera about an order of Carmélite nuns confronted with the French Revolution.

Kersten and Green audition the rudos for Dialogues des Carmélites. The rudos are the aggressive brutes of the angry French mob.

Check back with us this spring as we feature more behind the scenes images and content from our supernumeraries. For information on how to sign up for future productions, visit our supernumerary page.

Learn more about our supernumeraries:

Toronto Star

Theatre isn't Dead

Mooney on Theatre

CBC Video