'I was just sobbing with the beauty of it'

Jenny White goes behind the scenes at WNO's magical production of Candide, which has opened at the Wales Millennium Centre. Photographs by Mark Lewis

- Jenny White

interacting with the costume design by Nathalie Pallandre, which, between them, collide 18th-century France with 20th-century postwar America, adding a sprinkling of contemporary streetwear and camp glamour.

Judith Russell, who is responsible for touring wardrobe, stands sentry en route to the stage armed with an arsenal of pins ready to make any last-minute costume adjustments. After 45 years in wardrobe, she has seen it all when it comes to malfunctions.

“It could be anything from a zip breaking to somebody arriving with their heel in one hand and the shoe in the other, asking how they can go back on stage,” she says. “Eventually it gets properly sorted, but in the moment when they literally have to get back on stage, you have to have a plan. And over the years, I've done all sorts of different things.”

Current issues include a pair of shoes covered in studs which keep falling off. “The guy has only been using them for the last three days and about 25 studs have already fallen off, so in the short term, you just have to quickly make them look sparkly from the front” she says.

As we're talking, chorus member Simon Buttle is waiting to go on stage in a graflitied suit, his hair plaited to resemble a mohawk. As a chorus member, he has to be ready to take on multiple roles, often switching at short notice. In the last outing of this production, the need to cover for somebody saw him singing two roles in the same quartet.

“This time I've handed one of them to someone else so that I don’t have to sing two things at once,’ he says, adding that, like Ayola, he feels Candide is very special because of its message as well as its music and glamour.