NEW YORK — Pretty much everyone on stage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York must audition — even the snake who will briefly take center stage in an upcoming adaptation of a Mozart classic.
“The music’s different. The money is different. It’s a pleasure to entertain. And with snakes, it’s a delight to know that there are people watching who are in awe and people who are terrified. The first two snakes to audition were a bit small. One might have clashed with Ziegfeld’s top. “Animals have to perform as do human talent. Sometimes they have a set type of behaviors that they have to demonstrate.
In charge of deciding who gets the s-s-s-s-starring reptilian role is Zoe Ziegfeld, a carnival performer-turned-opera actor cast as the snake handler in the Met’s version of “Così fan tutte,” inspired by Coney Island in the 1950s. “I need to know that the animal is comfortable with people and with what we are doing,” Ziegfeld said. And those things happen at the Met and at Coney — so I would say they are more alike than different, to be honest,” Ziegfeld said. But the key is personality, Novograd said. And sometimes they just have to get along with the talent,” Novograd said. “So in this case, they have to be the right color, size, and Zoe has to like them.”
