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26 Chacón-Cruz's robust, dark curls had been deemed appro- priate for the part—so Jones concentrated on the facial make-up, starting with the foundation and moving swiftly to outline the singer's eyes, nose and beard. "He makes us look three-dimensional," Chacón- Cruz said appreciatively while Jones worked. "He adds textures and everything. This is a level of work you don't see at every company." In part, Jones says that's because the increasing prevalence of video cameras in the opera house has put a higher pre- mium on close-up naturalism. "We used to paint with real dimension for the stage so it would read from the 15th row all the way back," he said, a note of wistfulness creeping into his voice as he broached a subject to which he would return several times. "Now they ignore every- thing but the camera. It's not a good development." Jones was born in New York City, where he and his twin brother sang together in the choir at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—they sang at the funeral service for Mayor Fiorello La Guardia—and grew up in New England and then, Tucson. As a child, he designed puppets; his participa- tion in a high school theater program introduced him to the full array of theatrical design, which he pursued as a fine arts major at the University of Arizona. After college, he moved to San Francisco, where he was hired to work on the famous- ly elaborate window displays for Gump's department store. His two children—daughter Kimmerie, a theatrical designer in Honolulu, and son Nicholas, who works in the hotel industry in Phoenix—grew up backstage at his various workplaces. They pasted sequins on gowns for Beach Blanket Babylon and got to know the stratospheric catwalks of the War Memorial that provide an aerial view of the stage. "My son once wrote an essay at school about how he'd spent his summer, and the teacher gave him an F, saying, 'How dare you make this up.' I had to go explain to her that it was all true. For them, it was normal." Over the decades, Jones has worked closely with count- less singers, from marquee stars to chorus members, and he remembers most—though not all—warmly. "I've been lucky to have painted most of the greats. Ingvar Wixell, Renato Capecchi, Judith Viorst—I think of them so fondly. I did Samuel Ramey in nearly everything he did here. I never painted Leontyne Price, but I got to watch her up close." Régine Crespin, the great French singer who began as a soprano before moving into mezzo-soprano roles, was one of his favorite charges. "She was a wizard. The first time I painted her—it might have been for (Donizetti's) Daughter of the Regiment, I'm not sure—she explained very clearly the make-up she wanted: exotic, with silver and blue eyeliner slanted in a very particu- lar way. She had three heavy powdered wigs that had been made for her by Alexandre of Paris. "Crespin's visits were notable for another reason as well," said Jones. Former general director Lotfi Mansouri "used to come to her dressing room, and the two of them would gossip in French, about the other artists and about things in the world of opera in general. Well, my spoken French isn't that good, but I can understand just about everything. So I would lis- ten, and be very careful not to let on that I knew what they were talking about." That gift of tact and delicacy has served him well over the years, even when it didn't involve subterfuge. Tenor Neil Shicoff "was a favorite of mine—a wonderful singer, but he was kind of neurotic. He was always convinced he wasn't going to make it through the performance. So I'd be painting him but also reassuring him how terrific he was." Jones' soothing influence extends not only to sing- ers, but to the more than two dozen colleagues who work alongside him at every performance. "His gift is patience," said Parham, who spent years work- ing alongside Jones before being promoted. "He's always willing to do whatever needs to be done for the show. Sometimes he might say, 'We're falling behind, let's pick up the pace,' and you never felt it was a reprimand. He just had a way of guiding people in a helpful direction." "Not showing that I'm nervous is one of my skills," Jones chimed in. "I've gotten a lot of notes from artists saying, 'Thank you for your calming influence.'" In September, Jones plans to move to Phoenix to be near his son and granddaughter. But he's mindful too, that the Arizona Opera gives performances both there and in Tuscon—and he's not ruling out the possibility of keeping his hand in. "I'm one of those lucky people," he said, "who has always done for fun the same things he does for work." Joshua Kosman is the San Francisco Chronicle's music critic.