“For me, the essential work has already been done,” says Urstadt as the penultimate piece of scenery inches closer to the workers on the stage. The technicians, secured with safety harnesses at around 23 metres height and moving around the set at a fast pace, start attaching the piece of scenery as soon as the crane has come to a halt. “We spend about three to four years on average working on a project. We are well within schedule. Originally, four or five extra days had been planned for lifting the individual sections of the sheet of paper. Apparently, we don’t need them anymore,” says Urstadt with a smile, while on the shore of Lake Constance, other members of the team are busy preparing the last component for the next lift.

The individual polystyrene blocks, which were placed in their positions on the stage one by one, were manufactured in an assembly hall in the neighboring town. They are all different sizes and were shipped by special transport to the shore of Lake Constance, where they were transformed into a walkable sculpture in the water, about 23 metres high and 33 metres wide.

“The crane fits the pieces together like a puzzle,” says Urstadt, commenting on the action. “Here on Lake Constance, we can of course achieve vastly different dimensions than in a theater. The components are all quite large and building the set is heavily dependent on the weather – in fact, it’s just like being on a construction site – only in the water. We needed divers for many of the tasks, such as the erection of the crane itself. The crane’s undercarriage was pre-assembled and partially ballasted on land because it was impossible to hammer in the bolts underwater.”

The sensitivity of the control system is particularly appreciated by the crane operator. Lifting sections onto the floating stage is a precision job that requires experience. Roland Bühler, who goes by the name of Chappie, has plenty of this. He has had one of the best views of the floating stage for 20 years now. Madame Butterfly is his tenth opera set. Despite this, even he finds the task challenging: “Fitting the 117 elements seamlessly into one another was high-grade precision work. But it went very smoothly thanks to the crane’s control system. It does exactly what I want,” says Chappie, who has an impressive total of 12,000 crane operating hours under his belt.

The floating stage technicians and the crane operator are a well-rehearsed team. Half of the stage set is underwater, where Chappie can’t see anything. In some situations, this meant that he was like a pilot flying blind – wholly reliant on the ground crew’s instructions. What felt like a 300-tonne weight fell from his shoulders when the last part of the set was firmly installed and the stage crew radioed the signal for lunch. The basic framework of the stage was in place. “One of the things I love most about working up here is the variety. You start off with the steel construction, then move on to stage construction, and every two years something entirely different comes along again. One thing’s for sure: I never get bored here,” laughs Chappie.