Tenor stuns audience, walks off stage.

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Tenors are known for their caprices. Remember the Fellini film: 'And the ship sails on'.?
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Tenor stuns public at La Scala by walking off stage after being booed

December 11, 2006

MILAN, Italy: Franco Zeffirelli's new production of "Aida" took an unexpected turn on its second performance at La Scala opera house, when tenor Roberto Alagna stunned the public and his colleagues by marching off the stage after the audience booed him.
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"I do not deserve this kind of reception," an outraged Alagna was quoted as telling La Repubblica newspaper shortly after he walked off during Saturday night's performance.
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"What else could I do?" Alagna said in an interview Monday with Italy's Tg5 news. "Did I have to stay there ... until my voice broke?"

La Scala general manager Stephane Lissner released a statement Monday, in which he appeared to condemn behavior on both sides.
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He criticized the incident as "an obvious lack of respect to the public and the theater," but added that "I have always maintained that artists are at the center of a theatrical project and we are here to support them, to guarantee the best conditions for them so that they can do their jobs."
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Thursday night's opening had been one of the season's most-anticipated cultural events, and attracted an audience of leading political, business and cultural figures ?- among them Italian Premier Romano Prodi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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That audience applauded for more than 15 minutes after the final curtain fell, standing to cheer Zeffirelli, conductor Riccardo Chailly and a cast led by the Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Violeta Urmana in the title role and Alagna as Radames.
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But the second performance did not go quite as smoothly.
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Alagna came on stage and began singing. After a "nervous start," according to La Repubblica, Alagna started on the "Celeste Aida" aria, which immediately prompted a chorus of boos and whistles. Alagna stopped, looked at the audience, then walk off the stage, according to Italian news reports.
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He was replaced seconds later by his understudy Antonello Palombi, who rushed on wearing jeans and continued the performance. Lissner apologized to the audience before the opening of the third act.
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"In many years at La Scala I had never seen anything like what happened tonight," Chailly told reporters after the performance.
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Alagna rejected accusations that he did not sing well.
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"I don't think that all the people ?- the chorus, the orchestra, the managers of La Scala ?- were lying when they told me that I was singing beautifully," he told Tg5.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/11/arts/EU_A-E_MUS_Italy_La_Scala.php
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http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=50&eid=66&section=essay&page=2

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Interesting...

No, I haven't seen that film of Fellini's.

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A wacky Fellini, that's what it is. The tenor is totally mad and egoistic, like all tenors.
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http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/and_the_ship_sails_on/

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Yes, he may be a diva but where is his professionalism? You win the crowd over, not stomp off in a hissy. geez. Rolling Eyes

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This tenor was very popular because he was nice and had a good sense of humour.
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Leo Slezak (August 18, 1873 - June 1, 1946) was a popular tenor opera singer and actor/comedian.
Many anecdotes reveal his sense of humour. The best-known example: During a performance of Lohengrin a technician sent the swan out too early, before the tenor could hop aboard. Seeing his feathered transportation disappear behind the scenes, Slezak ad-libbed to the audience: "Wann geht der nächste Schwan?" ("When does the next swan leave?")

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Sounds like the boos were justified.

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Ok, it was unprofessional behavior. But perhaps the La Scala audiences will think twice before they boo a singer again. There's no excuse for their behavior either.

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This is not good re Italy's opera funding problem.

Me, I wish I were there. They've redone some of La Scala fairly recently; I've been outside the building but never in it.

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If you go to google image for La Scala and find this photo image (one of the first ones), and click on it, a page will come up with some La Scala history on it.

http://www.discountmilano.com/tour/Arte/Scala/Scala495x302.jpg

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I took a tour of La Scala in '93. It's a lovely theater - full of history.

And amazing acoustics, of course. We could hear the stage crew, speaking quietly to one another, from the back balcony.

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I took a tour of La Scala in '93. It's a lovely theater - full of history.

And amazing acoustics, of course. We could hear the stage crew, speaking quietly to one another, from the back balcony.

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Oooh.

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more pictures of La Scala

http://tinyurl.com/u9fgz

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When I was in Greece I witnessed the same acoustics. There was a group of Czech tourists on stage talking, giggling and singing. I sat way on top and could hear every word.
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http://tinyurl.com/y9cscq

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I saw Alagna perform in L'Elisir d'Amore and La Boheme, although that was about ten years ago. He has a magnificent voice and a commanding stage presence -- a rare combination for tenors.

I can't imagine anyone booing a tenor who had just started singing "Celeste Aida" unless they were planning on booing him regardless of how he sang. European audiences are far more likely to express their displeasure at bad performances than are American audiences, but booing someone who has barely opened his mouth is carrying things a bit too far.

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detano inipo wrote:

When I was in Greece I witnessed the same acoustics. There was a group of Czech tourists on stage talking, giggling and singing. I sat way on top and could hear every word.
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http://tinyurl.com/y9cscq

Worked sound in a theater once with a peculiar arched ceiling the ran from over the proscenium to a crack in the wall over the booth. We could hear the actors brilliantly -- and they frequently complained that they could hear us talking to each other, even though we were pretty quiet in our ridicule of the cast (bad show).

If you sat in the audience, you couldn't hear much of anything anybody said.

The anti-Scala.

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Opera? Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

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http://www.thesunblog.com/sports/archives/simon_cowell_idol-v_226727m.jpg

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We used to play Alagna at work and I liked his voice a lot. Seems abrupt in the booing to me too, but I've no experience with going to the opera in Italy (would that I did).

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Europeans have a reputation for expressing their disfavor toward poor singing performances, whereas Americans will politely applaud no matter what. I guess in this case the singer can judge his acceptance by the number of "bravos" received.

The question is whether the tenor's singing deserved the negative response. Even the best of singers have bad days.

Everybody has heard of the premiere of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" in 1913 and the cacophonous response it got right from the first notes and through the whole ballet. The conductor Pierre Monteux had instructions prior to the performance to complete the whole work no matter the response of the audience, and he did. I read an annecdote that after the last notes, the conductor turned to the audience and said, "Since you liked the piece so much, we'll play it again." This probably isn't true, but it sounds good.

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Tenor stuns audience, walks off stage.

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