Scenic Designer Eli Sherlock presented the final designs to Minnesota Opera, outlining the piano’s visual form and its placement within the set.
Building Florence’s Piano
With less than a month before the world premiere of My Name is Florence, go behind the scenes to see how the scene shop brings the production to life. The piano sits at the center of the story, an homage to American composer Florence Price’s music and lifelong relationship with playing the instrument, which she once described as feeling like “walking barefoot through the grass.” From early design to final assembly, the MN Opera Production Team worked carefully to create a piano that is both beautiful and symbolically functional on stage.
Piano Build Timeline
A behind-the-scenes look at how the piano traveled from imagination to reality for My Name is Florence.
Click the images to expand, and click again to return to the timeline.
Jerry Smith, Assistant Technical & Facilities Director, worked with Bearclaw Hart, Technical Director, to figure out how to make the piece real. They chose steel sizes, bolt types, and varieties of casters. Jerry then created a complete 3D model of the piece to figure out all the nuts and bolts (quite literally) and created 12 pages of instructions for building the piano.
Rose King, overhire carpenter/welder, studied the drafting and began cutting and bending stock materials like wood, steel, and plastic into the sizes needed for the piano’s parts.
After creating those cuts and bends, Rose started to assemble the slices—laying out the pieces next to each other and welding them together.
Rose then took those 2D slices of the piano and assembled them vertically, forming the piano’s three-dimensional shape.
In between bouts of welding, Jerry and Rose experimented with different plastics to test lighting effects in the keyboard area. These photos and videos were shared with the design team for feedback.
Rose completed assembly of the flat elements and handed the piano off to Lead Scenic Painter Erica Zaffarano.
Erica and Scenic Painter Mac Meza painted the piano to the design team’s specifications. The piano was then handed off to Lighting Coordinator Ray Steveson for the installation of integrated lighting elements.
Ray cut, soldered, and installed the LED tape specified by Lighting Designer Rachael N. Blackwell into various areas of the piano.
Early January 2026
The piano will be temporarily installed in the rehearsal room for the artists to practice with.
Mid-January 2026
The piano will be transported to the Ordway where it will be installed with the rest of the set. It will make its onstage debut during the run of My Name is Florence.
Mid-February 2026
After the production closes, the piano will be loaded out of the theater and stored in our warehouse, waiting for another company to rent the production to be performed again.
Florence’s Piano On Stage
