ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT The Atlanta Opera offers a big tent

Atlanta Opera patrons Carla and Randall Bailey do a bit of tailgating before a recent performance. Tomer Zvulun, the Atlanta Opera’s general and artistic director, waits outside the tent before the show begins.

Text and photos by Isadora Pennington

Once the COVID-19 pandemic started requiring performing arts groups to shut down performances last year, the general and artistic director of the Atlanta Opera, Tomer Zvulun, began to think outside the box, and then — well, just outside.

“At the start of the pandemic, many things were unknown and the information was constantly changing. But one thing remained true throughout — outdoors was safer than indoors,” explained Greg Euston, a representative for the Atlanta Opera.

The idea of open-air shows

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led Zvulun to a different notion: opera beneath a tent.

Last fall, the opera performed its first shows in the “Big Tent Series” in an open-sided tent pitched at Oglethorpe University. In April and May, the opera took up temporary residence in a massive striped circus tent in a parking lot of the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center.

The open-sided tent covered a full stage and socially distanced seating. Surrounded by tech tents, trailers and table settings, the tent allowed the opera troupe to present scaled-down versions of “The Threepenny Opera” by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, and a trimmed version of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” renamed “The Threepenny Carmen.”

“When the sides are rolled up,” Euston said, “the tent serves as a pavilion — a roof without walls — that lets fresh air wash through at all times.”

In order to appropriately and adequately respond to the risks posed by the pandemic, Zvulun established a Health & Safety Advisory Task Force of epidemiologists, public health specialists, and doctors led by Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor of medicine at Emory University, to advise him on continuing operations safely.

Those precautions included mandatory health checks, face masks for guests, cast, and crew, spacing between seats and groups in line, a covered but otherwise fully open setting for optimum air flow, and even booths on the stage in which performers can sing. One such booth is designed like a telephone booth, cleverly incorporating it into the setting for the play.

The stage itself appears to be permanent, but a closer look reveals a complex assembly custom-built to sit flat on the pavement. It provides a long walkway that juts out into the audience, large screens behind the main performance space and a backstage area.

From a separate tent, a pareddown orchestra performed. Each musician was surrounded by plexiglass dividers and could play their instruments without sharing air with one another, all while watching the conductor.

In addition to acquiring and outfitting the massive tent and surrounding tents and trailers, Zvulun also quickly enlisted 18 professionals based locally or otherwise connected to Georgia through the Atlanta Opera Company Players or the Glynn Studio Players. These ensembles feature established singers as well as ones just starting their careers and the work meant they could have paying work and access to healthcare during the pandemic.