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By ESTHER B. FEIN
c.1984 N.Y. Times News Service
    NEW YORK - Gilbert Ireland hasn't taken a vacation in 21 years. The
four weeks Bergdorf Goodman gives him annually are lovingly divided
into an hour here, an hour there, that he spends at the Metropolitan
Opera House, transforming himself from a store window dresser into a
Parisian bohemian, a Greek slave or a waiter.
    ''This is my 21st season,'' said Mr. Ireland, who is 62 years old.
''Some day I may spend my time off on an exotic beach. But for now
I'd rather cut up my time and be in any opera that I can.''
    Every season hundreds of New Yorkers perform as supernumeraries in
operas at the Metropolitan and across the Lincoln Center plaza at the
New York State Theater, where the New York City Opera performs. Their
roles as extras are as varied as the repertories, and their lives as
divergent.
    ''This year I have an artist who works at a museum, a paralegal, a
guy who writes for a science fiction magazine, a few word processors
and lots of starving actors,'' said Judith Jarosz, assistant director
of supernumeraries for the City Opera. ''But most of the people are
not particularly opera buffs. They just want to be on stage and see
what it feels like to be in front of 3,000 people.
    ''You can't do that on Broadway,'' she said, ''because you'd have to
be in a union, and you can't do it in the ballet, because you have to
look like a dancer. In opera, you can be Joe Banker and go to an open
call.''
    Which is not to say that the opera companies encourage people to
spend an evening at the opera on stage. ''We take a lot of pride in
choosing people, and we don't want people who want to try it out for
a day,'' Miss Jarosz said. ''If they love opera that much we say,
'Great, buy a ticket.' This is a commitment.''
    Miss Jarosz does not even like using the term supernumerary because,
she said, it demeans the position and creates an ''anyone can do it''
attitude about the role. ''I prefer to call them character mimes,''
she said.
    Lois Bootsin, who operates a health food company, is one of the
scores of supernumeraries who fill the stage of the Met, seen but
silent.
    ''One day I'm a prostitute, and the next day I'm a nun,'' said Mrs.
Bootsin. ''Where else could you get instant conversion like that?''
    Mrs. Bootsin's persona changes with the sets of the Metropolitan
Opera House. If ''Simon Boccanegra'' is being performed, she espouses
religion; if ''La Boheme'' is on the schedule, she hawks cheese, and
if ''Manon Lescaut'' is on stage, she sells her body.
    ''It's fascinating to discover a whole new world of creativity that
I had never been exposed to,'' said Mrs. Bootsin, 57, who recently
moved to New York from Los Angeles. ''I find myself reading the
librettos when I'm at home.''
    Ireland was a flower vendor the other night in Puccini's ''Boheme,''
but his name was not in the program alongside those of Pablo Elvira,
who sang Marcello, or Myra Merritt, who sang Musetta.
    ''A supernumerary learns to appreciate anonymity,'' he said.
    Once he actually was listed in the credits, when he played Herod's
slave Menasah in ''Salome.''
    ''That was my starring role,'' he boasted, ''and I never uttered a
sound.''
    Ireland decided to become a supernumerary when a friend who had
supplied him with free opera tickets lost his job at the old
Metropolitan Opera House on 39th Street and Broadway. Ireland said he
was ''too old to stand in the back and not rich enough to buy an
orchestra seat.''
    Being a supernumerary gave Ireland the chance not only to see the
operas from an inside vantage but also to be paid for it. Extras at
the Metropolitan are paid a minimum of $10 for each rehearsal and
performance, and the pay increases depending on any special acts they
perform, such as juggling or walking on stilts. At the City Opera,
seven people are contracted as full-time extras and the others are
paid $3.35 an hour for rehearsals and $8 for each full opera, or
$5.50 if they appear in only one act.
    ''It's not a living,'' said Gary Dietrich, the City Opera's director
of supernumeraries.
    
    
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NYT NEW YORK: of supernumeraries.
    Judith Mortenson was a supernumerary in the Metropolitan Opera's
first performance in its Lincoln Center house in 1966, ''Antony and
Cleopatra.''
    ''I majored in science in college,'' said Miss Mortenson, ''but when
I got on that stage it was like the promised land.''
    Miss Mortenson knew the singing would be impressive, but ''the
theater of it all'' is what captured her. She did a few shows a
season while she worked full-time as a public relations manager. But
last year she ''semiretired'' to perform in more operas.
    In most performances, she is a background figure. But earlier this
season she received unexpected applause when she made her entrance in
''Manon Lescaut.''
    In the scene, she played a wealthy woman traveling in a coach with
the simple Manon Lescaut, sung by Mirella Freni. When Miss Mortenson
stepped out of the coach, resplendent in an elegant costume, the
audience responded with thunderous clapping.
    ''They assumed I was the star,'' she said. ''For the moment it was
nice.''
    Backstage at the Met, supernumeraries are often shedding the
costumes from one scene and preparing for the next. Their dressing
room is expansive and unglamorous, fitted with wooden benches and
lined with racks holding costumes - rows of soldiers' uniforms,
peasants' capes and waiters' aprons.
    An intercom pipes in the performance in progress, and occasionally
the mellifluous music is interrupted by a stage manager's voice
directing the extras to their next scene.
    ''People think the supers just carry spears,'' said Bill McCourt, an
assistant stage manager at the Met who supervises the
supernumeraries. ''They are quite important as characters in the
opera, they just don't sing.''
    -
    In fact, John Krinsky became a supernumerary because he could no
longer sing. As a child he was a member of the children's chorus, but
when he got older, his voice changed and now, at 15, he is a
supernumerary.
    ''It's fun for me and it's a real conversation piece for my
parents,'' he said. ''They go around saying, 'Our son performs at the
Met.' You know parents.''
    He admitted that between rehearsals, performances and homework, he
does not get much sleep. ''I don't think I could pull this off
anywhere else but New York,'' said John, a sophomore at Hunter
College High School. ''Besides, that's sort of the point of doing it
- it's the Metropolitan Opera House.''
    -
    A few people who have performed as supernumeraries had never heard
opera before, let alone hearing of the Metropolitan Opera House. Last
year when the company performed ''Rinaldo,'' McCourt needed extras
who could flip and twirl for the battle scene in the finale. He hired
an acrobatic group from Newark called ''Flip City.''
    ''They had never been near an opera,'' McCourt recalled. ''They
showed up with these big tape players blasting these grating songs.
Then one day, I'm in the dressing room and one of the kids has his
big tape deck on and he's playing the score from 'Rinaldo.' They were
so enthused by the end, we took them on tour with us.''
    
    
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