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The man with the seven trades at Rivoli Theatre
If some people are said to be the soul of a house, others could be said to be the heart — that muscular organ. The life story of Francisco Choupina, a maintenance technician, has been merging with the history of the Rivoli for 26 years. "This is the understage, but down here [he points to the floor] there's another gallery where we have 4.000 gallons of diesel for the boilers, sanitary water, heating the building and the emergency generator."
Choupina takes us into the bowels of the theatre, which celebrates its 92nd anniversary this month. "We do these maintenance jobs that nobody knows about; everyone walks around up there and doesn't know what's underneath," he says, proud of his job. "The whole building is controlled by me. "The heating, ventilation and air conditioning system is here; we call it the central heating plant, and that's where we spend most of our time," he explains, as we enter a room full of machines and pipes.
"I learnt all my art in Paris." He was 17 when he arrived in the City of Lights, where he lived for more than a decade. He was responsible for building the models of the hotels designed by American engineers and architects, which were then built in the Disney Park. He returned to Portugal and joined Rivoli in August 1997. He is the senior employee of Rivoli.
© Rui Meireles
Electrician-carpenter-plumber
He's done sound and lighting, was a machinery technician, and even today he works as a carpenter, joiner, locksmith, plumber and electrician. Someone once called him an electroplumbocarpenter. Generators, boilers, diesel pumps and endless paraphernalia. Everything is under Choupina's watchful eye. "My job consists of maintaining the structure of the building, all the equipment and also supporting the companies with scenery and everything else they need."
Choupina emphasises that "improvements have been made, especially to the lighting; in the past, we used bulbs that consumed a lot of energy and now we have almost the entire building using LEDs," and as we pass through a long, freshly painted corridor, he comments with pride, "we've been painting this, it's beautiful, and we have to preserve it."
© Rui Meireles
We go up to the sixth floor to Rivoli's largest workshop, but first we cross a large room where, in the centre, there is a ping-pong table. "Twenty years ago, I made this ping-pong table for people to relax a bit, play a few games here", he tells us.
It's not unusual to be invited for "creative cooperations", as it happened with artist Ana Isabel Castro's chair in situ, for Rivoli's 89th anniversary, during the Covid-19 pandemic. The pieces of old and damaged chairs from the Grand Auditorium gave rise to a "new old chair". (...) Its deterioration was choreographed; its ageing fictionalised. The chair was properly manipulated, sanded, varnished and drilled by drills dressed up as [wood] bugs (...)*. Now, Choupina has also been challenged to build the displays for Agenda Porto's printed diaries.
*Ana Isabel Castro in “Bicho”, Cadernos do Rivoli, Volume 7.
Stories that can (not) be told
For almost three decades at the theatre, Francisco Choupina has collected many stories. "Some cannot be told," he says, mockingly, but agrees to share two episodes with us: "I have a story with Teresa Guilherme, about a time she was performing at the Small Auditorium. Suddenly, the soundboard broke down and started making a horrible sound; while we were sorting it out, she turned to the audience and said: 'Wait a minute, the ship is passing!' — The audience laughed, and it was a funny way to turn the situation around. The soundboard made a noise that really sounded like a boat," she says.
The other story, on the other hand, has a lot of water involved and could have had a dramatic ending. "A long time ago, Camané was performing at the Grand Auditorium, the room was packed; I had already left the building, but I was still close, when the video technician contacted me to say that there was a water break in the control room. The whole booth was flooded and the show was already underway. I arrived and managed to shut off the water; everyone was telling us to stop the concert, but I asked everyone to calm down. The water was pouring out like a shower. I managed to divert the water as much as possible so that it wouldn't flow into the Grand Auditorium, but there was so much water that it ended up going there. Luckily, it didn't start pouring down the walls of the auditorium until the show was over, and the audience was already getting up, clapping and leaving. They missed it by a second. It was close, but nobody realised."
There are fairies at Rivoli
Anyone who has been to Teatro Rivoli has certainly seen the work of Fátima Andrade and her team: the marble floor of the atrium shining like an earring, the red carpet of the Grand Auditorium immaculately vacuumed, or the hundreds of impeccably clean chairs.
© Rui Meireles
We see her passing by in a hurry, accompanied by her "fringes", the mop. Fátima is not an athlete but she has run many marathons at Rivoli over a period of almost 23 years. Walking from one end of the seven-storey building to the other over all these years amounts to hundreds of kilometres. She started as a cleaning technician at the age of 26 and was promoted to service manager four years ago. "It's a lifetime!"
She coordinates a team of eight women working in two shifts who clean the atrium, the restaurant, the toilets, the office floors, the two auditoriums, the stage and sub-stage, the dressing rooms, the long corridors and dozens of staircases and other rooms every day.
She guarantees that "there are no areas that are difficult to clean, even though it's a very, very large building". "Some days it's worse, other days it's better," she says, but admits that "the Grand Auditorium is probably the most demanding; it takes an hour and a half to two hours to clean".
Fátima is also a Rivoli spectator. "During La Féria's time, I came to see almost every show and afterwards I came a few times. I would like to come more often, but I don't have the time". We asked her if she would like to share a funny story with Agenda Porto. "Our fun here is the brooms!" she says, amused.
"Invisible hands"
Cleaning work is only visible when it's not done. "When everything is spotless, no one remembers that there was a lot of work behind it, but there are always a lot of people behind it."
Andrade is not the only Fátima on the cleaning team. Fátima Gonçalves, born in Paranhos, has been working at Rivoli for 24 years. She remembers "the most difficult shows to clean”. "The shows with dirt, sand, rice, polystyrene... That's a lot of work. With the polystyrene, we run after it, and it runs away. With the rice, we had to vacuum the auditorium on our knees", she recalls with a laugh.
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