In ‘The Gilded Age,’ Socialites Waged War Using Opera Houses

At the end of season two of The Gilded Age, a battle between two opera houses — the Metropolitan Opera and the Academy of Music — comes to a head, with Bertha (Carrie Coon) emerging victorious at last, gazing out over the star-studded premiere she facilitated. In order to re-create the opening of the Met and capture Bertha’s triumph, cinematographer Manuel Billeter used visual effects and on-location shooting at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. “This opera house, as we see it, doesn’t really exist,” explains Billeter. The front of the house, with the columns, was captured in Philly: “Bob Shaw, our production designer, felt it had the scope and the majesty to really convey this enterprise,” he elaborates. But the Academy of Music does not have boxes, key to this episode’s story. The photography department was able to get a sweeping pan of Bertha standing at the balcony looking down, but to bring together the principal actors, a staged version of the opera’s finest, most private seats was built. “We had a row of five [constructed] boxes that, with the help of VFX, we inserted into the grander auditorium,” Billeter says. “Then we re-created the same shot in those boxes and replicated the exact move. We did multiple passes because every single seat had to be filled, and we did that by repeating the same camera move over again and just filling extras in different sections of the house.” The resulting grand spectacle of Bertha and her packed auditorium is thus constructed from several shots taken from the exact same angle, seamlessly sewn together to create the standing ovation seen onscreen. This story first appeared in a June standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.