delicate exotic fruit
“We live in an age in which everyone is encouraged to express themselves, from inane blogging, Twittering and voting in mediocre talent shows. Please, let’s keep this out of the concert hall.” Jonathan Lennie admonishes over-enthusiastic applauders. (PS: the quotation sounds particularly funny if you do the voice.) [Time Out London]
God bless the author. I’ve lost count of how many performances have been almost ruined for me because people decide that the piece is over two seconds before it really is. I remember that extraordinary Tristan und Isolde at the Met a couple of years ago with Heppner/Baird/Salminen. It was a transcendent performance and the whole spell was broken by people applauding through the final chord. What’s the point? It’s like listening to a long joke and cutting it off just before the punch-line.
That portrait of Lady Bracknell is enough to
put one off tea forever, but I do agree with the
point about vulgar ill-timed applause. But what
can be done about it, especially in New York, which is itself so vulgar and ill-timed?
A great paradox and perplexity.
Couldn’t agree more.
Perhaps the most excruciating are those who won’t wait for the SINGER to finish her or his final note, who interrupt THAT. Do they think the performer appreciates this?
Yes, the peasants clapping before the music has actually ended are bad, but for opera, I place most of the blame on the people working the curtain. The audience is taking its cue from the curtain being lowered. How about a lighting blackout at the end of Tristan *then* the curtain falling?
I would feel more comfortable if the peasants didn’t turn up in tanktops and smelling. Then I would worry about them clapping before cabalettas or whilst the final note is still ringing in the air. Curtain folk bear a lot of the blame Mr Holland, I agree. One wonders whether indeed it is the music and the artist or the drapery that is being given the ovation.
The blackout before the curtain always works and I find that more and more productions are incrporating it.
It is none of my business what the person next to me is wearing. I like to dress up for the opera/symphony/ballet myself but I am just as happy to see people enjoying the arts in jeans and t-shirt. Odours are a different of course, as they affect all those around the person.
It is true Kashania that I have a problem with armpit hair. I understand this is not normal and most people would feel quite at home surrounded by tufts of hair emerging from tanktopped bodies, impregnated in various perfumed substances or just plain sweat. I will have to learn to conquer my repulsion and become normal, like the rest.
It would be nice to see a copy of this letter distributed to every concertgoer/operagoer at every performance (in multiple languages) and, if I may say, add an admonition to all those idiots that insist upon using their cell phones and cameras to blind everyone around them (and the artists.)
I also like that moment of silence at the end of a performance as the whole experience sinks in, but…
I would willingly accept the applause and the screaming if in exchange the audience stopped talking DURING the performance. I’ve had many evenings spoilt by the incessant chatter of people around me not only at the opera but also the ballet, concerts and straight theatre.
Lately at the Kennedy Center I’ve felt that they might as well not even darken the theatre. Let’s just make it a party.
As the letter also addresses concerts, am I the only one who feels that some performances should NOT be followed by encores? After a Schubert cycle, for example, I’d rather not hear trivial bon bon as an encore. Please let me relish the memory of what I’ve just heard!