Imagine you have a job so important that it can make or break a musical performance. But you're not a conductor, an opera star, a concerto soloist — in fact, the audience might not even know you exist.
Behind the spotlight, a huge range of music professionals are doing the secret jobs of the industry.
From backstage, on-stage and even miles away from the stage poring over scores, these are some of the hidden figures who don't make the music, but make the music happen.
The opera prompter
Professional opera is a bit of a high-wire act, and the prompter is the safety net.
If you're in the audience at the opera, you'll probably never realise a prompter is there. Usually a musician themselves, they're tucked into a little box in the stage, with their head poking out just enough for the cast members to see them.
For the overtired and under-rehearsed principal singer, the prompter provides a tether to the score, calling out the first words of each line as the music flows on.
A panicked performer can look down into the hatch for a friendly face singing ahead or mouthing along whenever they need.
These days, the prompter might have an electronic score and a video monitor showing them the conductor's movements, but back in the heyday of Italian opera, they were armed with a thick-bound and minutely annotated copy of the score, and a rear-view mirror through which they could see the conductor.
At the world's most famous opera house, La Scala in Milan, Italy, the post of prompter, or "il suggeritore", is Marco Munari, a core part of the music team.
"Since one of our eyes must always look at the conductor on the screen and the other at the stage, we need to know the score by heart," Munari explained in an interview published by La Scala.
"Often, at the end of the performance, the singers are very grateful for my help."
Changes to the culture of opera production mean that prompting is a dying art. In fact, in Australia, it's functionally extinct.
But in countries with robust and fast-moving opera industries, like Italy, prompters still save singers' lives on stage every night.
The page turner
Unlike the prompter, the page turner is highly visible to the audience.
If things go right, they contribute absolutely nothing to the performance, seated on the left side of the piano on a stool, ready to turn the pages for a pianist whose hands are too busy.
Alastair McKean, in addition to being head of library services for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, is a seasoned page turner.
"Musicianship and discretion" are the skills you need to do the job well, he told ABC RN's The Music Show.
"The musicianship [is] so that you can do the mind reading and can see where [the music is] going, but the discretion — you have to melt into the background and just not be there."
Sometimes the pianist and page turner are in perfect sync, like old friends with a secret language.
But sometimes, they're perfect strangers, and that's why there's a broadly accepted choreography of pianist and page turner.
The page turner sits, following along with the piano part on the music stand, then stands or crouches as the player reaches the final line of the page.
They curl their finger around the top right corner of that page, look to the pianist, who gives a subtle nod, and then quickly flip the page.
When it goes right, it's seamless. When it goes wrong … well, the internet is littered with "piano page turner fail" videos.
Like McKean, on one memorable occasion, you might become so absorbed in the music that you fail to notice an emphatically nodding player improvising their way around an unturned page.
"I didn't get asked back," he says, "And that was fair enough."
Or, like The Music Show's presenter Andrew Ford — who has dabbled in page turning — you might pick up a double-sided page of very modern music and have no idea which side the pianist has already played.
The surtitler
If you watch a foreign language film, you'll see subtitles: the translation of the dialogue at the bottom of the screen.
Surtitles are the same for opera — the sub (under) prefix being swapped out for sur (over) — which is where you'll find the translation of the operatic libretto spooling along as you watch.
Most opera-goers benefit greatly from this addition to a performance, as the vocal technique required for singing operatically means that even an English language opera might not be all that intelligible.
That's where surtitlers like Natalie Shea come in.
Shea is a singer in Pinchgut Opera's chorus, and she also manages their surtitles.
It's a job in several parts, starting with the translation.
"Every translator has a different audience and a different purpose for what they're doing," she explains.
"You have to hit the right note, because otherwise you can make people laugh in the sad bits."
She recalls attempting to translate a line in a Vivaldi opera as "she's on the throne", which looks perfectly innocent on paper.
"There were chuckles … We had to change that one," she admits.
She then has to break the translation up into little chunks, which can be a big challenge too.
Some bits of opera go extremely slowly, where a singer might vocalise on a single word for a minute or two, and then very fast, such as in recitative, rapidly sung scenes which tend to rattle through exposition and plot development.
Giving the audience enough information without making them speed read is a delicate balance to strike.
Then, finally, there's the "sensitive matter" of operating the surtitles for a performance.
The surtitler must click the button to change the line at the exact moment, making sure not to pre-empt a punchline or reveal an "I love you" before the hero can sing it out to his beloved on stage.
These tiny choices can have a big impact on the audience. So, next time you're watching a show, spare a thought for those behind the scenes, quietly helping to make the magic happen.
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