Tail coats

One thing's for sure: working in a theatre wardrobe department keeps you fit. As I climbed four flights of stairs to the Southampton attic eyrie that was home for the week to Welsh National Opera's touring wardrobe department, Kate Barlow was whizzing downstairs. On her arm was a voluminous rust-brown frock, carefully held aloft so that it didn't drag on the ground. A singer had just called in sick, so her understudy was going on instead. The understudy needed a different-sized frock, and Kate was taking it to her dressing room.

It's all part of a day's work for Kate, who is WNO's deputy head of touring wardrobe. The frock delivered, it was time for an appointment with the washing machine - in Southampton a machine is built in backstage, but at some theatres WNO has to bring, and plumb in, its own laundry equipment.

"There's about four loads from last night's show," Kate explained. "Tonight it's modern dress, so there is an awful lot of shirts for the gents, and the ladies have got lots of tights. There's probably going to be more washing from tonight than there is from last night, and the third show, Cinderella, is different again. With Cinderella you can't wash a lot of the costumes because they're quite elaborate - they're padded, and they've got rods in them to hold them out and make them into certain shapes. So you can't just stick them in the washing machine. We give the cast T-shirts, which can be washed, so at least they get a clean T-shirt every day."

The costumes are made back at base in Cardiff, in consultation with the costume designer for each opera.

"A designer may have an image in his (or, of course, her) head, and want the costumes to look a certain way. Sometimes if he doesn't understand how costumes are made, or what certain fabrics do - they way they fall, the way they hang - he will need a costume supervisor who understands that side of it. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but the two of them normally come up with a solution that will make his idea happen."

When I buy a shirt, I buy it solely because I like the colour. I have no thought about how difficult the material might be to iron, or how much it might crease when packed to take on holiday. Are touring wardrobe staff like Kate consulted when costume materials are selected?

"No, not at all!" Kate laughed. "It would help if we were. I don't think it very often enters a designer's head how a costume is going to be kept clean on tour. I think he wants to see it on stage as he imagined it in his head, but what happens after, that is our problem!"

Singers, too, may have their own preferences about costumes, for instance, how much room they have to breathe and sing once they are all kitted up ready to go on stage.

"The lady who should be singing tonight, Lisa, she wears a corset in this show. Some people like it, others don't. Some people can't bear having restrictions, other people want to sing against tight costumes: I'm not quite sure what they mean when they say that, but they almost like their costume to be as tight as possible. The higher up the cast list they are, the more say they have in what they wear. The chorus have less say, unless it's truly uncomfortable - and then we hear about it!"

Opera can be a murderous business - plenty are the characters who get stabbed, often accompanied by the orchestra rising to an appropriately dramatic climax. That, too, means work for Kate and her three colleagues.

"We're responsible for getting the stage blood off the costumes. The wigs department is responsible for putting it there in the first place. We get the rough end of the stick on that one as well. In The Sacrifice, the cast are all in nice suits, which obviously you can't put in the washing machine, and because of the nature of touring you can't necessarily have them dry cleaned after every show. So it's a case of wiping the blood off with a damp flannel and by the end of a six-week tour the jackets have seen better days. The blood we're using is sugar-based and tastes like candyfloss, so the little boy who gets blood all over him in this show likes licking it off his arms."

WNO has commissioned The Sacrifice from composer James MacMillan, and the opera is on its world premiere tour. Described as "a compelling and timeless story of a ruler's ultimate sacrifice to safeguard the future of his war-torn, faction-ridden country" and a "highly-charged thriller", one of the characters gets knifed. On the receiving end is singer Peter Hoare, who duly has to produce a lot of the aforementioned blood.

"I marry the girl another man loves," Peter explained. "Leigh Melrose, playing the part of Evan, is the guy who stabs me, and we worked it out together with four simple moves - thrust, parry, punch, stab.

"Because we're professional singers rather than professional fighting people, we very much have safety in mind. We practised it very slowly to begin with, like practising scales on the piano. Then we gradually increased the speed, so it now looks spontaneous.

"Hopefully, there's no danger, although I might get a bruise, or something like that. The injury' causes me to have a slight paralysis in the right hand, which then makes me left-handed. I have to do this amazing non-right-handed acting, which is a joy to watch. Every so often, I forget. I'm making it all sound funny, but actually it's a very serious opera.

"But there was a case at the Met, involving a mate of mine, where someone actually did get stabbed. The retractable knife blade got stuck, and my mate got hauled off to Hill Street, or whichever police station it was in New York. It was just a puncture wound, luckily."

At the New Theatre, Oxford, Welsh National Opera present The Sacrifice on November 14 , a new production of Cinderella on November 15 and 17, and a revival of Il Trovatore on November 13 and 16. For tickets call 0870 606 35000.