no way out
A quick YouTube search for “opera” this morning yields this startling snippet.
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Is it wrong that I love the booing?
I would change the title of this thread to Met
Sonnambooooooola.
Shameful!
Ain’t she cute in a spastic way?
What’s with nat nat’s autistic applause?
This very “audio” tape will show you the extent of the displeasure at Natalie’s idea of “fun” at Bellini’s expense. The production crew and all those that slam the opera BEFORE they present it should have been booed and were. Missing was the one who insisted on this change, Dessay. She wanted the jokes and the shick…and it wasn’t respectful of this opera, of Bellini or even this public that usually laps up the crappe./
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6os3uAkHAg
I’m glad the audience is alive and this is starting to happen. The Met audience has contented itself with shitty performances and staging for a long time. People need to speak their mind at the Opera and the bar needs to be raised!!
Stop the mediocrity or refund my ticket money!!
Who would pay over one hundred smakers to see that crap or even to close their eyes and insult their ears and listen. I’d rather buy a CD close my eyes and be thrilled. With the change I could get a good bottle of wine and some cheese.
oh boo, just watch me instead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIAyU3wgFhM&fmt=18
and NY times love it too
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/03/arts/AP-Opera-La-Sonnambula.html?_r=2
I was going to say that the booing didn’t seem as bad as the reports, until I heard the whole of GayGlitter’s link.
I wonder if Dessay is aware of the irony at the heart of her performance – she thinks she’s too cool for a traditional production, but her vocal interpretation is crammed full of traditional ornaments and general extraneous bel canto diva whimsy.
Just remember who broke the story first:
http://oliviagiovetti.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/i-was-saying-boo-llini/
Hmmm, And so many bloggers were objecting to booing only a few days ago… Still feel that booing is uncalled for?
6. She sounds strained … it makes me cringe … I feel sorry for her -she is in the process of singing herself out of work. Good for us then … to think the perfection she was capable of just a few years ago.
Yawn! Reactionary American audiences. Zzzzzzzzz
Of course, it all adds to publicity, sold-out performances, articles and interviews with Dessay, etc. It makes opera “relevant” to today’s audiences. Isn’t that what “we” all want?
A non-review reaction:
http://rogerevansonline.com/2009/03/02/sleeping-beauty/
#1. No, tamerlano, I was ecstatic, as if Brazil had scored a goal in the World Cup Finals.
I think the vociferous condemnation of the production was all the more powerful considering how morose the audience had been all night long, to the point that us chatters wondered if the snow had kept half the ticket holders from going. But no – obviously it was a savvy audience that clapped sparingly and only when it was merited. And the booing, well… we all heard it. I’m glad I didn’t stop taping the broadcast, underwhelmed as I was, because the unprecedented reaction in these Sirius broadcasts – as well as Juntwait’s claim that there was “loud applause” for the production – was just priceless.
Holy crap – ‘Ah non giunge’ was past embarrassing – this girl needs to stop singing this rep. She could barely connect more than 3 notes at a time, she’s got no top, she’s flat, her attempts at fioratura were disasters – who were the idiots screaming brava after this mess?
Sad for anyone buying tickets to the house or a moviecast of this opera salivating over a chance to see a scandale. In reality the production is pretty tepid, neither one thing or another.
If you are a fan of Florez or Dessay you get them in a star vehicle in their current best form – but not much else.
The boo-ers had obviously been looking forward to counting the daisies on a hillside …
I did not see the performance, so i can not judge how it was. but i will still defend my point that booing is “below belt”. if booing is the only way a person can show his/her feelings than I feel very very very sorry for this poor creature.
Great Zinka’s Ghost! I haven’t heard booing of a production team at a Met prima like this since the opening night of the Zambello LUCIA.
Juntwait did NOT say there was loud applause for the production team. She carefully said that Dessay was vigorously applauding the production team as they entered. And as you can see from the clip.
You’re right. People should just applaud politely and send complaint letters to Gelb and Zimmerman.? Sounds like the Bush administration…
Spare us your pity, La Divina…booing has always been a part of theatrical tradition and yes, it IS the only immediate way to express how you feel after having your evening ruined. Perhaps you are lucky enough to get free tickets to things and therefore have lost nothing in watching a fiasco like the Met SONNAMBULA. For those of us who pay for our seats, we will pay back…the only way we can, at least until they start offering refunds.
Of course Dessay applauded the team…they gave her all this crap to do so as to distract from her vocalism.
ladivina—I’m confused. What more enlightened methods are there for a member of the audience to “show his/her feelings” than booing, if those feelings happen to be negative? I suppose that I, along with the “poor creatures” you mention, am deserving of your pity, because I simply can’t think of another way to go about it.
Joan Sutherland famously said “I think Booing is ill-mannered. A hush, a deathly hush, is just as spine chilling as a boo!”
I have to say, that’s the loudest booing I’ve heard outside the CPAC convention. Quite remarkable at the Met.
I have not seen this, so I should refrain from comment, BUT, based on the pics in the video of the bows, the costumes look more than silly. Cartoonish.
And that IS a great deal of booing.
So everyone who saw it, should I buy a ticket and judge for myself, or should I save my money for something else?
Jatm2063:
IDEALLY,…you should ALWAYS go, and see/hear for yourself…you might even enjoy it (and that’s not a knock towards you—everyone is different..and I sometimes have found that the more people dislike something–the more I actually like it…lol!)
HOWEVER… times and finances being what they are these days…a word to the wise…it sucked…!—save your money…
La Stupenda is right. Imagine how much more striking it would have been if there’d have been silence instead of booing? Or just the sound of a few hands clapping?
Juntwait did NOT say there was loud applause for the production team
It is also cear from the tale that She has a script and intended to read from it but was stopped by common sense. She pretty much said “there’s loud applause for the production team…..er from DESSAY!, oh yea, she’s applauding.”
I think this was the funniest bit in the entire bored-cast. The boos forced her to go off script.
Well, Jatm2063, I have another ticket for 3/18 and as I cannot bear to sit through this again after last night, I’ll be out front selling it. Actually, there were a surprising number of people selling last night, presumably because of the bad weather, but I wonder if that will be the case at subsequent performances now that the news is out (and after the Times review appears, IF it is reviewed honestly).
And as for Dame Joan’s remark (see #27), she’s absolutely correct, but she’s also absolutely too ladylike to countenance the justifiable anger expressed by last evening’s audience.
I can’t wait til I get to see it on the 18th. Just to say I went to that dreadful Sonnambula
well, Wenarto posted a link to the Times review and by golly, it is a fair (for the NYT) review. It calls it a travesty.
Perfect!!!! Let’s not do this opera for 30 years. Then when we do , we’ll do a REAL PIECE OF SHIT production and hope that the fame of the singer won’t make us notice.
This does sound like a pretty silly production, but I think there are also some people who are just offended by the notion of any production that is not by Zeffirelli.
The link that Wenarto posted is to an AP review by Mike Silverman who got it right. We will see what spin Tony T. will weave in the NY Times tomorrow. Those who are attending later shows please inform us if the staging’s biggest gaffes are removed in later performances. Like writing “ARIA” on the blackboard and other things like that.
Lindoro – Wenarto’s link is to the Associated Press review (as posted on NY Times website). It is not the NYT review per se.
Is any of this really a surprise? From the moment I saw the terms “Natalie Dessay” and “New production of La Sonnambula” this is pretty much the result I expected. The descriptions of the production make it seem like it’s not as bad at it could be. It’s a shame that currently really great/interesting/engaging new productions are so rare that one almost always prepares for the worst when getting ready to be exposed to them.
The power of tepid applause occured Monday night at Covent Garden. After Nebs and Garanca walked out to a tumultuous roar of bravos – mostly deserved I’m sorry to inform the Nebs-haters – the clapometer level dropped vertiginously for the curtains of Dario Schmunck, Eric Owens and Gianbattista Parodi – three of the worst performers of their respective roles ever to have stalked the RO boards. Does Eric Owens have a big American career? And if so, why? He was dreadful as Seneca with ENO a while back, so hard to imagine why he was thought suitable for Covent Garden. Bring back John Relyea, all is forgiven.
#40 Regina:
what was the production? I Capuleti?
It didn’t sound to me like Juntwait had to improvise her script. She said that Natalie was applauding the production team enthusiastically and that, despite the boos being heard, there was a lot of applause when the curtain came down.
After the curtain calls ND was heard saying to MZ
“Marie, do non pay attanzion to zose silly Américains. Zey arr not Français like me and zey ne pas know art like me. J’ai été né français and art iz in moi veinz, nes pa? Ziz produczione iz goin to go placez. Nez year we do Norma mon cherie.”
WOW! Three people booed at the MET! What a revolution! Unheard of! Sorry, guys (girls), but at the big European opera houses it has been normal ever since the first days of *Regietheater* in the mid-1970s that the production team of an opera gets heavily booed at the premiere. I have attended countless premieres in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, or Paris, where literally hundreds of people booed. You sort of expect it and are surprised if it doesn’t happen. I recall premieres in Berlin where the audience was so outraged that they started booing DURING the performance, and they shouted stuff like “Kill the director”, or “This kind of Regie should be prohibited by law!”, etc. I remember even performances at Deutsche Oper Berlin in the 90s where the booing grew so loud that you could hardly hear the orchestra anymore. If a Berlin premiere would provoke the reaction that this MET Sonambula did, people (and critics) would say “What’s wrong that there was almost no booing?” So what happened after opening night at the MET is ridiculously tame and harmless compared to the average European Regietheater premiere.
Hmmmm. The vitriol being directed toward this makes me curious to see it.
I guess there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Here is the link to Howard Kissel’s Cultural Tourist blog with another pan:
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/culture/
Although this was unquestionably the ugliest production in Met history, the production really worked for me. Any way you slice it, Sonnambula is just plain silly. The idea of a production within a production has been done to death, but here it provided some interesting ideas about the nature of reality. Of course, producing so ugly a set, which appeared to be full of junk they sourced from backstage, really didn’t help the cause. I didn’t boo Zimmerman and her team, but I didn’t applaud them either. To be fair, I thought her Lucia set, with those awful cut-outs in Acts I and III was far, far worse. I also thought that this production was better than the turgid Norma they do from time to time.
Lost in the all the furor about the production is that the music was truly first rate. Dessay was magnificent. Anyone who rightly complains that Netrebko can’t do bel canto should appreciate what Dessay brings. My guess is that the folks who are complaining heard this on radio, because they are too cheap to be in the house. Florez continues to be a revelation — this is the best bel canto singing I have ever heard from a tenor. Full stop. And if Zimmerman showed no appreciation for the source material, Piro certainly did, conducting at a proper pace and volume for this piece.
I thought it was one of the best nights this year.
BTW, it was a lot more than three people booing. I would guess that 1/4 of the house was booing. It was louder than any of the applause.
billy’s butt: Actually, I don’t have anything to say but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make a remark to billy’s butt.
Seriously, I think that booing at the Met is a big deal because it so rarely happens. I’ve heard radio broadcasts from Germany and agree that it’s almost de rigeuer to boo the production team. But at the Met, this kind of thing happens once a decade. And we’re not talking scattered boos spread out among polite applause.
The booing was deservedly more unanimous and intense than I’ve heard in thirty five years of attending premieres.
re.: final scene of Tyrolean gamboling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dDFIHfTFqg
#46: re: “too cheap to be in the house.” Just a reminder that not all who read this blog live in New York or environs.
Billy’s Butt….what a cool nom de blog.
Tyrolean gamboling is something else I hope to cross over my Must Do List.
#46 Not Peter Gelb “this was unquestionably the ugliest production in Met history”:
In my humble opinion, “Thais” was the ugliest, cheapest looking and most tasteless production in MET history. But I only started going to the MET in the late 1980s, so maybe I missed some other ugly ones.
The latest negative review has appeared online, from bloomberg.com. See the link below:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=a5FqN2g0o7uQ&refer=home
xiaoming, Productions do not have to be by Zefirelli to be succesful. (Not that all Zefirelli productions have been succesful.) The Met has had many “traditional” and “non-traditional” productions that have lasted for years and years, e.g., Rosenkavalier, Gioconda, Dialogues, Parade, Otello, Manon Lescaut, l’Elissir, the Ring, Hoffman, Tannhauser, Rigoletto, Rusalka, Jenufa, etc., not to mention the old Barber, Samson, Luisa Miller, Frau, Ariadne, Flute, Hansel & Gretel, Turandot, Fidelio etc.. Some streamlined (and sometimes cheap) productions may not have been particularly loved but they did not offend either, e.g., the ’70’s Aida, the Ponnelle Mozarts, L’Italiana, etc. The sensationalist productions just don’t last and, therefore, are not economically justifiable for a theatre with no government support and always struggling for donations.
My biggest problem with the production was that it had no internal consistency. The premise of the actors lives mimicing the lives of their characters could be interesting. The stage manager (Lisa) competing with the diva (Amina) for the love of the hunkentenor (Florez). But I could not figure out who the Count was in this scheme. And why did they have the inn on the stage of the rehearsal room? Why would the diva be sleeping in the auditorium? I tried to follow the internal conceit, but it all fell apart for me there. The remainder of the production made no sense following its own internal scheme. At that point it was just a cheezy grad-school exercise in postmodernism with expensive singers.
Whatever happened to tomatoes?
Oh dear. I desperately wanted Sonnam to be liberated from Alpine kitsch, but it doesn’t sound like Zimmerman is the woman to do it.
56 — that’s just what I was thinking — why not bring back the custom of throwing rotten tomatoes or eggs at bad stage directors?
Williams: I believe you have just Ric-rolled us.
the problem with the idea of “devastating silence” instead of booing is that it would only work if the whole house does it. so monday would have sounded like….clapping only. so with 1/4 of the house clapping, booing is much more immediate and effective. the Z knows more strongly the message than if part of the house was just silent.
Oddly enough, the booing is not nearly as loud or as universal as has been claimed here and elsewhere. In fact, I’d say that less than 10% of the house is booing with the rest of th audience just politly applauding. As usual, the loudest (the booers) are the ones that are heard.
From what has been said here and elsewhere you would have thought that the boos were deafening. The evidence — presented here — clearly shows that that wasn’t the case.
I’ll see it next week. I’m kinda curious. Florez sure looks cute in his curtain call outfit!
#41 Brian – yes Capuleti indeed. It was good to hear Netrebko on form. I’m no major fan of hers (for two main reasons – she’s musically lazy, and she is a bad judge of what repertoire suits her voice) but when there’s not too much fioritura to deal with and she stands still and remembers to enunciate and not just rely on her beautiful sound, she is undeniably fine. I think not being the only woman on stage and having to match Garanca’s superior technique helped as well!
#61 You are only hearing what was captured on the video. If you hear the SIRIUS b’dcast, the booing was from the entire house and gives much better “picture”.
Totally depressed… I was so eager for this production.
#21 if booing is the only way a person can show his/her feelings than I feel very very very sorry for this poor creature.
Your assumption (”if booing is the only…”) renders your argument pointless. It sounds like you didn’t listen to the broadcast either, because the audience showed their disapproval in other ways too – mainly through silence and/or tepid applause. The impression this vesuvian explosion of boohs gives is that, after a perhaps overhyped, underwhelming night at the Met, that was the last straw for them; tepid applause alone wouldn’t cut it.
booing vs silence or tepid applause
Silence, i.e., lack of applause is the adequate response to a poor or uninspiring performance.
But when the performance offends, when it insults the art, then I say booing is the appropriate response.
from another generally more charitable site, news about another favorite Parterre target: Villazon a chanté ce soir donc. Tout petit succès général je trouve, à peine même pas 10mn d’applaudissements (mais très chaleureux…), bizarre.
Hippolyte: link?
#46. Sonnambula is far from silly. The only problem the opera possesses is that it is exactly what it presents as: a simple, touching love story. There’s no phenomenally intricate subtext and the protagonists are wholly innocent personalities. My guess is that people who think it’s silly have their heads stuck so far up certain orifices that they can no longer appreciate simplicity and honesty in art.
As for the complainers being too cheap, well, I forked out $350 US, and I agree with them, it was a crap production. I didn’t boo, but I sure as hell didn’t clap for Zimmerman’s team..
The production just didn’t make sense. Amina was one character during her entrance aria, the diva Dessay, and another from Prendi: l’anel ti dono onwards. Elvino wasn’t a character at all, a situation not helped by Florez. The entire situation surrounding Count Rodolfo was confused from go to woe, and the antics that ended Act I were completely unnecessary nonsense.
From the choral scene beginning Act II to the much lamented scrawling on the blackboard at the beginning of Ah! se una volta sola, to the Dessay-ex-machina device that carried the soprano over the orchestra for Ah, non credea, there were just too many theatrical gags and not much sensitivity to the music or the story. Whether or not that’s what Zimmerman intended, that’s how it appeared to this audience member.
I wasn’t particularly stunned by any of the musical contributions either. Pido was good, not unsupportive, but somewhat uninspired. Florez was his usual semi-brilliant self, and consistent, if only ever consistently 6.5 out of 10. Dessay’s Ah, non credea had some touching moments, which was just as much the composer as the soprano. And she was clearly vocally tired through Ah! non giunge.
If we are to believe Oscar Wilde’s assertion that “The artist is the creator of beautiful things”, then the only artist on the Met roster present last night was Renée Fleming, standing outside the Parterre boxes at fulltime, and looking ravishing.
I have several questions regarding this fiasco.
If Lucia was Zimmerman’s first attempt at directing an opera production. why did the Met engage her for three productions at the same time? Couldn’t they have “tested” her with Lucia and decide on Somnambula and Armida after Lucia?
If a singer who is making his/her house debut had been badly received by the audience and had been criticized in printed press, would the Met management re-engage that singer? Are they using the same “artistic criteria” to hire directors and directors?
Can the management give the Armida production to someone else?
I think the Met management bears the ultimate responsibility for this production. Even Joe Volpe describes in his memoir how he intervened, on more than occasion, in the creative process for a new production? The results may be discussable but clearly the Met General Manager has that power.
#40 & #41,
At the end of the dress rehersal of C et M at CG, the audience applauded Netrebko and Garanca for 15 minutes, rather unusual for the reserved and cool British! Nebs is not that bad after all!
#62. The booing was loud, and long. I haven’t heard the Sirius, but the youtube clip does not do it justice. It was easily louder than the applause, and didn’t abate until Zimmerman was offstage.
Interesting that someone pointed out RF’s attendance and that Mary Zimmerman’s upcoming Armida production with RF in the title role.
I wonder if Renaaay is feeling any trepidation after seeing the show and the audience reaction.
If you are going to update Sonnambula couldn’t it be updated in a morally repressed society? They still exist in certain parts of the world and in certain religious societies. It seems to me that Amina presented as a diva loses any innocents that the characters music suggests. I feel an audience can always identify with a innocent, fragile, naive heroine.
Interesting point jatm2063. It seems that since Natalie Dessay had so much influence on the conception of the La Somnabula, RF may have equal if not more weight in what goes into the Armida production.
I have the Sirius broadcast recorded. On strictly the aural evidence, the applause for the performers is long and vociferous — standard for the Met. But when the production team enters, the booing starts and totally drowns out the applause. Juntwait makes the aforementioned adjustment to her commentary, calling it “mixed.” It may be that she was able to see people applaudng, but you certainly could not hear them. A comment is made about Dessay strongly applauding Zimmerman, with the phrase “flapping her arms,” which conjured up the image of a hungry seal.
I would assume at that point, it was decided that to go one would be futile, so perhaps everyone left the stage at once, because all audience response stopped and I guess having had their say one way or the other they went home.
Ciri-biri and Biri-Bin went into their usual “Gee, I can hardly wait for tomorrow night. See you then” crap, and it was over.
I’ve got to remember that even though my response is right under the previous when I type it, it will not be posted with the same immediacy.
Hence, may I explain that #77 is for the elucidation of #73
If it is acceptable to cheer, then it is also acceptable to boo. Enough of this PC crap. I have sympathy for singers having an off night. It happened even to the greatest singers. But an awful production is the result of a great deal of planning and worse was approved well in advance by the company.
Jesus Christ.
It’s one fucking bel canto disaster in this house after another. In this season alone a fifth rate Lucia with multi-tenor casting with epic fail after epic fail, and now this fifth rate, dredged up staging for a classic “weak libretto” (you bitches’ description, not mine.)
I mean really, why even fucking bother.
Can’t get through Verdi, can’t get through bel canto, is there ANYTHING this house can do well any more?
I seriously wonder.
A production such as this insults the composer, the musicians/singers and the audience to such a degree that a vociferous response is not only valid but many ways necessary.
Our wallets were violated and our intellegence was called into question. Not to express outrage would run against our feelings and need to express our displeasure. Sitting on our hands would have been unthinkable and unhealthy.
In short, we booed the bastards!
In re. #80 (Cassandra) – maybe Wagner – but, then again, wait for the new Ring. That could be a meltdown.
Dears, you need to practice your booing – rather underwhelming. If you are going to do it, do it properly. Maybe voice lessons and projection would help. I thought you vulgar Americans would trump us decadent Europeans, but this was nothing on the overwhelming torrent of disapproval that greeted the production team for Anna Vriebrock’s recent Paris ‘Ariane et Barbe Bleue’.
Give it some welly, you big sissies.
Cassandra @60.
WAGNER ! ! ! ARE YOU SIRIUS !! I MEAN SERIOUS ! ! ! !
Did you live through the recent spate of Tristshit und Ioldpoop?
Until the last run of Don Giovanni, I would have said the Met is still a good Mozart house. Rossini? Yes. Puccini is on-and-off.
What makes me scream in anguish is that I can’t see that The Met is in any worse shape than any other international house. Aida is an endangered specie. Another Regie Nabucco set in an opium den.
Hey, La Sonnambula set in a Catholic High School. That would work. Sort of “Grease” without the attitude. Yeah.
Sorry, I digress.
Who adjusted my meds when I wasn’t looking. I meant Operadent at #82.
I’ll be sulking in the powder room.
Or pouting int he sulker room.
One or the other, but I’ll be doing it.
I wouldn’t count on the Met being a good Wagner house with the horrid Lisa Gasteen singing Brunnhilde. Of course there’s more to a Ring Cycle than Brunny, but still, she can’t sing anything above a G….
Keith MC confessed:
“Yawn! Reactionary American audiences. Zzzzzzzzz”
Well, go sleep the sleep of the ill-informed. The staging was not “daring”– it was inept and cheap and lacked internal logic. Met audiences will cheer updated productions **if they work**: for example the brilliant LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK and more recently SALOME.
Anyone who sees this controversy as being about artistic daring in the face of conservatitism is a patsy of Gelb’s publicity machine.
I could boo Mary Zimmerman *tomorrow*: it’s a question of also booing that narcissistic French baggage who fancies herself too hip and ironic to perform Romantic rep as written.
Quickly, I’m 100% with you.
For those that scream about the Met being too traditionalist, what are they trying to say? I always thought the word firstly in regard to Opera, meant the seeking of consistent high quality standards.
That is, not allow a lurch into what people could expect to see at a local high school production with all the usual risible faults and flaws plainly on show.
Where people politely tell each other untruthfully of course, that everybody had a fun night with a forced smile There, one is expected to forgive if some ‘little Ms Nattie’ screams a few notes and her tits off key, the direction is ratty because Ms Zimmer the drama teacher did a lousy job, like last time she handled things as well. Well next time everybody will have the new excuse “Its Regie, didn’t you know!” And some pretentious thing probably nicknamed the Queen of Maria Theresa Chandelieria so wanting to SUCH a fan of Regie because they believe it to be hip will exclaim “Yes, I know and is’nt it SOOOO outrageous opps, too I nearly always wet myself!”
Who else noticed that many of the other videos on this list of 15 provided to us by our doyenne are of gigantic muscleboys?
OK, whatever it is, just boo my Sonnambula
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkcrkATqvWA&FMT=18
You New Yorkers just don’t get ‘real’ theatre. Too many boring Broadway productions have watered down your sense of theatrical adventure not to mention intelligence. Too many of NYC’s great dramatic and musical productions have started in Chicago. Chicagoans know the Windy City is the real ‘theatre’ town, home to the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Lookingglass, Victory Gardens, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and numerous other great theatre companies. Mary Z is brilliant! Send her back to us with Dan, Mara and TJ! Love them all!
Are you under the impression, R 93, that those Broadway sillinesses are put on for New Yorkers? No, they are mostly for the tourists — including the visiting Chicagoans.
Re: #72
“At the end of the dress rehersal of C et M at CG, the audience applauded Netrebko and Garanca for 15 minutes, rather unusual for the reserved and cool British! Nebs is not that bad after all!”
Music criticism via applause meter.
Did she actually manage to get through an entire production without ever going off pitch? I would applaud that vociferously as well.