The trucks pulled in behind the Metropolitan Opera House, and stagehands began unloading sets for Bizet’s “Carmen,” hauling them onto a mammoth elevator, similar to those on aircraft carriers, and storing the disassembled pieces of Spain below the stage between a patch of Scotland from Verdi’s “Macbeth” and bits of Paris from Puccini’s “La Bohème.”

Upstairs, Tom O’Brien was at his iron, pressing some of the fabric — he will press more than a mile of it by the end of the season — that the Met’s costume shop cuts and sews each year into hundreds of costumes. Ilya Shevel was painting a gangplank for John Adams’s opera “The Death of Klinghoffer,” which some Jewish groups plan to protest next week. And Tom Watson, who runs the wig department, was placing curlers in the hand-tied blond wig that the soprano Anna Netrebko will wear next week when she stars as Lady Macbeth, perhaps Verdi’s most villainous diva.

“Finally, I can be myself,” Ms. Netrebko said, with a mischievous smile, of her portrayal.

The opera season that was nearly derailed by a labor dispute this summer was getting underway, and a day spent backstage at the Met this week as the company prepared for its opening night on Monday provided a snapshot of the work, care and expense that go into putting on opera: something the company has done for nearly 131 years, but will now try to do a bit more frugally.