The days of the gallery first-nighters sometimes-vociferous jeers in the West End are long gone; as on Broadway, London audiences nowadays seem hot-wired into the instant standing ovation, at least on opening night here and every night there, to convince themselves as much as the actors that they’ve had a great night out and it’s been worth all the trouble (and expense) of being there.
But the tradition of catcalls from the upper galleries are still alive and well in the operatic world, it seems, where on Sunday evening, tenor Roberto Alagna stormed off mid-performance in Milan of the Scala’s new production of Aida, in which he was singing the role of Ramades, following boos that greeted him that night. “I heard a boo as soon as I went on stage – even before I began to sing,” he is reported in today’s Guardian as telling Italian newspaper La Repubblica. He has also now declared, “I shall not be coming back to La Scala again. It’s not a theatre. It’s an arena.”
In today’s Telegraph, he is also reported as saying, “The audience is intimidating. It reminds me of the fear of expressing oneself feely that existed in the Communist bloc.” And it does seem that it wasn’t so much his performance as an interview he gave that caused disapproval: Laura Foscanelli – one of the so-called loggionisti, the “hard-core opera anoraks who pack the upper galleries,” in the words of the Telegraph – quotes him as saying, “If the public whistles me, it does not deserve me,” to which she answers, “He needs a bit of humility.”
And the diva-like behaviour of his storming off doesn’t suggest there’s much of that in evidence. The artistic director of La Scala, Stephane Lissner, has accused him of a “blatant lack of respect for the audience and the theatre”, and an Italian news agency Ansa has reported that the theatre was considering whether to demand compensation from him.
The Telegraph’s opera critic Rupert Christiansen suggests that he’s “still a considerable singer in the right repertory, and that single booer – who was probably chauvinistically motivated by the view that an Italian should have been cast – is outnumbered by his many fans.” But, he goes on, Alagna now faces a supreme test of nerves, and advises; “Come on Roberto, take a deep breath and try again. Are you a true operatic trouper or just a tenor whose vanity got the better of him?”
It’s fascinating to find passions running this high, both offstage and on. When’s the last time this happened in the legitimate theatre?
What exactly would be considered to be 'legitimate' theatre?
Here in America even the theatre is so bloody passive, audiences hate to be looked at or either touched. Everybody seems so used to reality TV or the movies that they are intimidated by anything that resembles a live performance. I guess it's just a sign of the times but it stinks!!!
The last time I heard booing in the "legitimate" theatre was during the curtain call of Resurrection Blues at the Old Vic. The only surprise was that not everyone joined in.