Even the snake has to audition at the Metropolitan Opera.
Zoe Ziegfeld, a carnival performer turned opera actor, is playing the snake handler in the Met's new production of Mozart's 'Così fan tutte,' reimagined as a 1950s Coney Island carnival. Part of the job: casting the reptile that will share the stage.
Ziegfeld put each candidate through the same test — lifting the animal overhead, watching how it moved under stage lighting, and judging its comfort with people. 'I need to know that the animal is comfortable with people and with what we are doing,' Ziegfeld said.
The winner was Princess, a sun-glow boa constrictor described as 'yellow-peach' with a commanding stage presence. 'We will be moving forward with Princess ... in rehearsals on a trial basis! She is a wonderful snake, and the trial is not about her, but rather about me and my strength,' Ziegfeld wrote after the audition. A smaller brown boa named Nala, from a separate tryout, will serve as understudy.
This marks the third time Ziegfeld has taken on the snake-charmer role in the Met's version of the 1790 opera. The original plot — two soldiers testing their girlfriends' fidelity — survives the transplant to a Coney Island sideshow setting.
Ziegfeld's résumé for the part is literal: years spent running eight snake-charming shows a day on Coney Island, plus a sideshow specialty called the Human Blockhead act, which involves driving a nail into one's own nasal cavity. Years ago, when live snakes weren't permitted in the audition room, Ziegfeld got the job using video of the act instead. 'The music's different. The money is different,' Ziegfeld said of comparing the Met to Coney Island. 'But I would say they are more alike than different, to be honest.'
The animals themselves came through Nancy Novograd's company, All Tame Animals, which supplies the opera house with performers ranging from elephants to insects. Novograd got into the trade after her horse appeared in a Met production of 'Carmen.' The first two snakes tried out for the role were passed over for being too small — one risked clashing visually with Ziegfeld's costume. 'They have to be the right color, size, and Zoe has to like them,' Novograd said.
The episode is a small but telling snapshot of how one of the country's most storied cultural institutions actually runs. Nothing at the Met is handed out by fiat — not the lead soprano's role, and not the boa constrictor's. Talent, human or reptilian, has to clear an audition.
That same logic built the business behind the snakes. Novograd did not wait for a government arts grant to create a market for opera-grade elephants and insects; she spotted a gap in a niche industry and filled it with a private company that now supplies one of the world's premier stages. Ziegfeld's own path — Coney Island sideshow act to Metropolitan Opera cast member — tells a similar story: skills honed in the free market for entertainment, sharpened through repetition, and eventually rewarded on merit rather than pedigree. It is a reminder that culture, like capital, tends to reward whoever shows up prepared to perform.
