Opera star: ‘I want to shoot the audience’

There is a reason Dmitri Hvorostovsky gives few interviews. He can usually be trusted to put his foot in it.

Gently grilled by Anna Picard in the Times (paywall), the London-based baritone admits to seeking favours from Vladimir Putin and is coy about politics. The one thing he cannot stand, he confides, is audiences that vent negative feelings.

When I ask him about audiences that boo directors, he mimes picking up a rifle and pulling the trigger: “It’s an abuse. I want to take a gun and shoot them. Because it’s teamwork. Anything that we are talking about in opera is teamwork. You stand together.”

Dmitri, darling, don’t do it. The audience are the ones who pay your wages (along with a few oligarchs we won’t mention). They have a right to express themselves. Don’t shoot before you think. That’s why you need bodyguards back home.

Read the interview. It’s great fun.