Bye bye tutus, hello masks: French opera houses join COVID battle

Normally they make tutus and elaborate costumes for some of the greatest opera and ballet stars in the world.     

But the costume makers from opera houses across France are now turning their considerable talents to making masks.    

Since the beginning of April, Christine Neumeister, the costume director of the Paris Opera, has been driving around collecting masks 30 of her couturiers have made while locked down at home.    

The first week they made 1,000 for the Red Cross and a Paris maternity hospital, and the following week they made a similar number for the Salvation Army.    

Packed into "tutu bags" marked "Opera de Paris", they have to be among the chicest personal protection accessories around -- although staff from the French couture houses Dior and Louis Vuitton have also been volunteering to turn their hands to mask making.   

"We have the material and the know-how," said German-born Neumeister.    

"It's also rewarding for us too to know that our work, which is an art in itself, can be useful in this moment of crisis," she added.    

"My German grandmother used to say that during the war people who could make something with their hands were the heroes, the kings and the queens."    

With chronic shortages of masks for the general public and even medical and nursing home staff in France, there is no shortage of takers.

The country is likely to make wearing mask obligatory in some public spaces when its strict lockdown begins to be relaxed from May 11.

Mask-making in the costume departments of opera houses across France only began in earnest after the official norms were posted online at the end of March.

Neumeister "opted for a mask with three folds which resembles a surgical...