Cindy Tobias majored in Gilbert & Sullivan at MIT – or at least
that’s the impression her parents had of her academic career. She
directed Utopia, Ltd during. her sophomore year, and directed and designed scenery for The Mikado
junior year. After college, she joined the chorus and the scene shop of
the Opera Company of Boston, where she met another G&S’er, now her
husband Terry. Opera in Boston with Sarah Caldwell was never boring; on her first opening night, Don Quixote whispered “Psst! She changed the blocking this afternoon and you have to help me into my coat!” The logistics for this with a six foot nine bass were … interesting. Cindy also served as Shop Welder, props mistress on The Girl of the Golden West tour (two live horses!) and drew Jon Vickers’s figure drawings for Benvenuto Cellini. She played Madame Butterfly’s grandmother, Lady Macduff, and Minerva and the Queen of the Moon in two Offenbach operettas.
Cindy has designed twenty-one operas and other shows, and directed fifteen. Her first OperaDelaware set was for the world premiere of Menotti’s The Boy Who Grew Too Fast, and her most recent was for this spring’s Tosca. She has sung and directed for the Ardensingers, and adapted many of her Arden sets for Rose Valley Chorus and Orchestra. This June she published her murder mystery, Death of a Designer, on Amazon Kindle. It can’t be autobiographical – the opera’s set designer is murdered in the first chapter – but she’s put almost everything except the two live horses into it.