World Trade Center Portland
Portland, Oregon
Saturday, August 8, 2026 | 7:35 am.
I wasn’t looking for opera.
Walking through Portland’s World Trade Center on an August morning, I noticed the windows of Portland Opera and stopped. Behind the glass were elaborate costumes covered in lace, ruffles, berries, flowers, and enough ornament to suggest that restraint had not been part of the assignment.
They were part of Portland Opera’s 2026 Internship Project, inspired by its upcoming concert production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata.
But it wasn’t the costumes that held my attention for long.
It was the cakes.
Sitting among the designs were elaborate cake props from Portland Opera’s 2018 production of La Traviata: tiers of frosting, berries, flowers, and ornate serving pieces.
And eight years later, they were still here.
There is something fascinating about encountering a prop after the production it belonged to has disappeared. Live performance is temporary by nature. The singers take their bows. The audience leaves. The scenery comes down. What existed for a few hours onstage becomes memory.
But sometimes the objects remain.
I rarely encounter props from past opera productions displayed this way, close enough to study rather than simply absorb as part of a scene. Usually our attention goes elsewhere: the performers, the costumes, the sets, the music. A prop can almost disappear into the theatrical world precisely because it is doing its job.
Yet props tell stories, too.
A letter can reveal a secret. A glass can become part of a betrayal. A basket can become the hiding place for a character like Falstaff.
And an elaborate cake can tell us, before anyone says a word, that we have entered a world of celebration, abundance, elegance, and display.
I never saw Portland Opera’s 2018 La Traviata, and standing at the window that morning, I didn’t know exactly where these cakes had appeared. In a way, that made looking at them more intriguing. Removed from their original scenes, they invited me to imagine the theatrical world they once helped create.
Later, curiosity sent me looking.
Portland Opera still had its 2018 trailer for La Traviata on YouTube. And there they were.
The cakes.
Eight years younger and back where they belonged, scattered across the tables of Violetta’s glittering Parisian party.
They sat among champagne glasses, flowers, candles, and elegantly dressed guests—the abundance and display I had imagined while looking at them behind glass. In one shot, Violetta herself stood before a table crowded with them.
The props had told me something about the scene before I had ever seen it.
Seeing the cakes back onstage also made me think differently about the woman at the center of that world.
Violetta Valéry moves through an elegant Parisian social world while carrying far more than those around her can see. Her beauty and public presence exist alongside illness, reputation, love, and the expectations placed upon her as a woman. Much of her story unfolds in that tension between what is presented to the world and the more complicated reality underneath.
Standing before those cakes, I began thinking about their surfaces.
A decorated cake presents itself before we ever know what is inside. Frosting is piped, flowers arranged, berries carefully placed. What lies beneath might be sweet or tart, dense or delicate, layered with cream or jam. The exterior offers beauty, but not necessarily the whole flavor.
There was something about that idea that seemed at home in Violetta’s world. She knows something about presentation—about what the world sees and what remains underneath.
The cakes, of course, take the idea somewhere stranger. There is no flavor underneath. They are props: beautiful surfaces constructed to create the illusion of something underneath.
Even the cakes were putting on a show.
I don’t know whether Portland Opera intended any such connection in its 2018 production. I only know that, standing before the props eight years later, it was difficult not to see one.
Perhaps that is part of what makes theatrical objects so interesting once they leave the stage. Removed from their original scenes, we finally have time to look at them—and sometimes find stories within them that we might never have noticed during the performance.
The 2026 interns did something similar. Portland Opera brought these surviving La Traviata props forward as inspiration for new costume designs.
Brennan Winn’s Slice of History played with red velvet cake and an 1875-inspired silhouette.
Genesee Gold’s Confection embraced the extravagance of wedding cake.
Sara Smith’s Violet Patisserie turned berries, jam, lace, and shades of purple into something that seemed almost edible.
Looking closer, I realized that clusters of berries had actually been worked into the costume itself—a detail I don’t think I had ever encountered before.
The old props had become starting points for new stories.
That morning, I hadn’t known where those cakes once belonged. By the time I went looking, I could see them again: scattered across the tables of Violetta’s party, surrounded by champagne glasses, flowers, candles, and people dressed for an evening of beautiful appearances.
Eight years later, they were behind glass in downtown Portland, surrounded by another generation of theatrical creations.
The party was over. The cakes were still telling stories.
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