At the Met, a spectator yells, ‘you have no technique!’
NewsMembers of the audience report that the most shocking event at Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos last night was a man getting up and yelling at a soprano as she finished a signature aria.
Following Brenda Rae’s fabulous aria in the second act of tonight’s “Ariadne auf Naxos,” someone in Box 33 yelled “YOU HAVE NO TECHNIQUE” before storming out.. gross !!
— Juan A. Ramírez (@itsNumberJuan) March 18, 2022
The US soprano Brenda Rae was playing Zerbinetta, a role she has starred in at major European houses, where she is a crowd favourite.
Drama at the Met? Well, I never.
— Rob Russo (@StageLeft_NYC) March 18, 2022
The Met will now seek to identify the disrupter from the area of the house where he was sitting. He can expect a mandatory ban.
The loggionisti have invaded the Met. Such disruptions are not uncommon in the Italian opera houses. Brenda is made of sterner stuff!
Indeed, she persisted. Unlike Alagna at La Scala in 2007.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx1uBcxpD6Y
I always think of Luciano Pavarotti when he was booed at La Scala. He was asked “why do you think you got booed?” and he immediately replied “I did not sing well!”
Not bad but trills are not exactly her forte:
https://youtu.be/XakCD4c8qVc
and if you’ve forked out for a ticket and are exasperated beyond measure why not?
Because it’s rude.
So the Met admin will seek to ban from the house an attendee for speaking some truth out loud? They should first consider that the individual presumably paid for his seat which I think gives him the right to protest if what he paid for was unsatisfactory and below expectations. In any case, the Zerbinetta in question, as well as the Komponist (replaced yesterday by what appears to be someone even worse), sounded dreadful in the broadcast last week. And so did the Met’s latest crowned diva, Lise Davidsen, in the title role and in Strauss’ Four Last Songs during the concert for Ukraine. But it appears that the business has reached such levels of depravity and despair that it is verboten to rightfully criticize appointed “stars”, whether such status was earned or not.
May I suggest a hearing specialist? Lisa Davidsen was absolutely superb. I was in the house not listening on the radio. Nobody need worry about Netrebko no longer singing at the Met – Davidsen is the next Birgit Nilsson. Alex Ross agrees with me so I know I’m right.
As was I as well, and, no, Lise Davidsen was not that good in the Vier letzte Lieder, with the exception of her money notes. Those notes were impressive, but she has not yet learned how to negotiate those notes–at appropriate volume–and the musical line.
Don’t get sucked into the marketing. Instead of being the next Nilsson, how about just a superb Davidsen…one day?
Change to first sentence – “As I was there as well,…”
Despite this, the Met’s benefit performance was respectful and appreciated by all who wished to show their support and concern for the citizens of Ukraine.
Yes.
After her superb Ariadne the week before, Davidsen sounded far less impressive with the VLL. She did not hit her stride until “Im abandrot”. But David Chan’s violin solo in “‘Beim Schlafengehen” was spellbinding.
Remember The Slipped Disc Commentators’ Met Law: a singer is great when he or she sings in Europe but all the sudden becomes bad when he or she appears at the Met.
I was in the house on Saturday as well. Davidsen was superb, Isabel Leonard not in the same class, Brenda Rae has a voice too small for the Met. Good to have Wolfgang Brendel back, even if only in a spoken role. And let’s get Marek Janowski back in the Met pit.
The Elijah Moshinsky production is indeed a delight; this is how you stage opera.
Brenda Rae’s voice too small for the Met ? What do you expect from a coloratura soprano ? For me she was less dwarfed by Lise Davidsen than Brandon Jovanovich.
P.S. Let’s continue with the law. When one cannot blame the Met cast, there is always blaming the building or the auditorium itself, which actually has superb acoustics.
Granted, the Met is not what one will call an architectural masterpiece. But it’s not worse than the Bastille or the Großes Festspielhaus Salzburg – and none of them have Chagall murals.
Getting back to Davidsen: while some comentators, have called her the new Nilsson, others the new Flagstad, I believe the best analogy with a singer from the past is with Astrid Varnay. But Davidsen is a great artist on her own.
Based on my experiences at The Met, if the Met has, quote, “superb acoustics”, then the S.F. Opera house is Carnegie Hall.
San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House received greatly improved acoustics with the post-1989 earthquake retrofit. Whereas before, the sound in the balcony (to which I am forever condemned, alas) often seemed incredibly distant, especially in such operas as Mozart’s, since the 1990s restoration, the sound is much warmer and readily audible. Arriving late one night for a Handel opera, I was required to wait in the back of the standee section behind the upper balcony until the first break. Seated in a sofa against the back wall, I heard delicious and delicate sound coming clearly from onstage. I still don’t know what made the difference, but I suspect the thorough cleaning of the metal grand chandelier and the replastering of the walls made much of the difference.
Time and place. I get being hacked off that a performer doesn’t seem up to snuff after forking out a lot of money. But yelling from the audience–even if you don’t think it’s inherently rude–also disrupts the enjoyment and experience of everyone else who paid a lot of money to sit in those seats. No one there paid to hear your opinion and can come to their own. Flustering the performers or just creating a negative atmosphere for the rest of the night definitely impacts the environment they all experience the night in.
I think it’s rude and uncalled for, but at the very least if we’re to take a pro-consumer view of this and that performers should accept this as part of their work, it’s selfish to the rest of the audience.
You are missing the point. Making a commotion of any sort during a performance is a taboo. Shouting out one’s opinion unnecessarily and storming out disturbs not just the singer but everyone at the performance. You make this about right to critique, but even “free speech” is not unlimited freedom to say everything whenever you want.
So? Recuse yourself from any future attendance at the MET.
There are plenty of aficionados who disagree with you on EVERY point who would be happy to know you weren’t there!
This is not the place to raise First Amendment issues. There were, presumably, several thousand people in the audience, (nearly) all of whom had paid for their seats. Do you really think that every one of them is entitled to give a running commentary? Would you like to listen to even a handful of opera attendees sharing their opinions regularly? Wait until the curtain calls, and then fire away, if you must.
Yelling such mannerless, disrespectful rubbish in the middle of a performance is called “speaking some truth out loud.” You need to seek some help dude.
Some audience members have no manners and respect! Awful!
Reading the responses to this on Twitter, people seem remarkably unaware that this has always been a part of opera. Even today, such antics would be just be an ordinary Tuesday night at La Scala. Not a big deal.
People make it seem like the booing at La Scala is some kind of virtue, but the loggionisti are a tiny minority, and their motives are sometimes greed — they’ve been known to try and shakedown singers, threatening to boo them unless they give them money.
And they say it’s hard to get a job in the music business…
Horse manure in the streets had “always been a part” of city life until people decided it didn’t have to be that way.
No, not until “people decided it didn’t have to be that way.” Until someone discovered you could extract and refine oil, and someone else invented the car engine, and other people build the infrastructure. I’d like to know how all this could be transferred to opera performances. Criticism is criticism, not horse manure, though it doesn’t have to come in form of disturbance in the middle of the performance.
Perhaps it’s that the German-code silence during the opera widely practiced in American houses indicates a greater love for the art than with Marxist-Leninist Italian audiences who have nothing to lose and nothing to gain by attending opera.
Yea, I was there and he was incredibly loud. How selfish and narcissistic!
Another similar disruption happened on Monday at Carnegie Hall between movements of Symphonie Fantastique.
What’s wrong with everyone?!
To be fair the outburst at Carnegie was an argument between patrons not a criticism of the music. I was there in the balcony when it happened.
To be more specific about the Carnegie incident, a person sitting on and across the aisle from where I was that night was apparently moving around a bit too much for those around him, and when they asked him to sit still between the 4th and 5th movements, he threw a short temper tantrum (about 2 minutes), loudly insisting a number of times that he wasn’t moving around, that he bought his ticket, etc., until he got up and stormed up the steps and out the door; Nelsons heard it, and waited until he was gone to begin the last movement.
you call two minutes short? You should multiply that 2 by two thousand, for every audience member.
OK, I’ll stick with the old-fashioned La Scala BOO next time
Mandatory ban? What happened to freedom of expression? Should boos also be banned? What is a “boo” but a monosyllabic grunt for “you have no technique”?
What a f* brilliant comment. That’s your understanding of what “freedom of expression” means?
Well I heard her as Zerbinetta the other week and I respectfully disagree with the narcissist who thought he had to let the house know just how important he is.
The Met expects tame audiences. Performances in Italy are more lively events.
The “You have no technique” is exaggerated, but she certainly had a noticeable wobble in the broadcast performance last week, and her high notes were a bit hard before the intermission. By the time she had arrived at “Grossmächtige Prinzessin” she was considerably improved, though something of the wobble was still there, and the highest notes were sharp and thin.
I’m going out on a limb here but I guess the fellow didn’t like her performance of the aria.
Play it safe next time.
Sounds like some of the people that comment on this site.
So I am going to be banned if I boo somone??
The Met has in the past banned at least one chronic boo-er (who is no longer in NY). La Scala rules don’t seem to apply there.
I was there last night. The guy yelled and left the audience. I think everybody heard the yelling, but few understood what he was saying. It was not even clear that this concerned the singing. Could have been a protest about whatsover. So this had nothing to do with booing.
The man was just voicing his “comment”, such as on YT or other social media, only IRL…surprised we don’t hear about more of these incidents.
“You have no technique” — what a hurtful comment. In know, because I took lessons with the same violin teacher for 38 years and I heard that at nearly every lesson. The fact that the criticism was spot-on didn’t lessen the sting any. Sometimes he’d say that even before I opened the fiddle case ….
I have only been at one concert (I rarely attend opera) where an audience member decided to loudly berate the performer. It was Brian Priestman guest conducting the Milwaukee Symphony. I no longer recall what the guy’s beef was — Priestman had started to talk to the audience, maybe that was it? — but it was squirmingly (to coin a word) embarrassing and I suspect the common reaction for most of us in the hall was “who cares what YOU think?”
Which, looking back at it, was also something my violin teacher would say from time to time.
Did your violin teacher make up for that counterproductive comment with advice on how to improve your technique?
Do you expect the violin teacher to impart advice on how the pupil should improve his or her technique, _in the middle of the performance_ ? No? Then why expect this from a member of the audience? During performance people express short approval or disapproval but don’t impart lengthy advice.
In America negative criticism has been cancelled. Everything is “wonderful” or at the very least “they’re trying so hard” (we are all “they” now.)
I was also there, and heard the shout, though not the actual comment. Now that I know what was shouted, I can agree that Ms. Rae did not perform her role very well last night, but did not warrant that level of opprobrium. Apart from Ms. Davidsen, and a few of the supporting roles, nobody was in great form last night. But I suspect the shouter was someone starring in his own one-man opera, which is in need of some fine-tuning.
If I go to a performance and don’t like what I’ve heard, I just don’t clap. Simple as that. If enough people don’t clap, the overall message gets communicated in a far more effective, and less hurtful, way than booing or yelling an insult does. Getting booed or heckled is certainly bad, but I can’t imagine anything more hurtful or devastating to a singer than their receiving tepid applause or complete silence after a mediocre performance.
“don’t like what I’ve heard, I just don’t clap. Simple as that.”
Simple as that, and wrong. If people are allowed to express approval by making noise, they should also be allowed to express disapproval by making noise. 10% of the audience starting a racket easily offset the silent 90%.
What’s about just loving and respecting any artist who display their art on stage…We all can have opinions, some of us know a lot about traditions, or technique, but but let’s share our opinions between friends at the interval or at the end of the performance. I could write and write long message about being an artist (I am not a performer, but I lived all my life around artist, and I understand a little bit their life and their anxiety). Let’s applaud them with both hands and open heart. Paying a ticket should not be an excuse to be rude.
And Brenda Rae is a remarkable artist.
Let’s love and just love the performers. I will never thank them enough the for the many joy that they gave me all my life. Long life to them. Let’s protect them. Let’s just love them.
(sorry for my English, it is not my 1st langage).
Don’t you think there are many shades of gray between applauding every singer with both hands and an open heart, and being rude? Applauding everybody just breeds mediocrity.
I usually refrain from applauding if I don’t like the singing. Booing or shouting out rude remarks is just a boorish, low class behavior. However, I also listened to the broadcast on Sirius. Granted, it was very clumsily expressed, but the guy had a point, the performance was indeed subpar. Unfortunately, great performances have become vanishingly rare and , probably, a thing of the past.
The manufactured stars, frequently miscast, is what we have now, with some exceptions.
Probably got a screw loose!
Never, ever, boo a singer in the midst of a performance. They are trying their best and if they fail are as upset as you may be. If they do not hit the note, or do not try (I remember Domingo’s Celeste Aida at the Met in 1990) by all means do not applaud, but that is all. Stay polite.
And, by the way, the audience at la Scala when I lived in Milan, never booed a singer. There might be a silence if the loggionisti had not been paid and the performance was less than great, but the audience was well mannered.
Maybe you can boo a director at a first night if his production insults your intelligence (Herheim’s Queen of Spades at the ROH) but only rarely and only if he/she comes on stage at curtain call.
But don’t boo the singers
For the ticket price you have to pay nowadays a little bit of audible dissension along with the applause is ok with me as long as it’s not during the music. A ban??! This kind of thing is a tradition in the birthplace of opera. Gelb, don’t be a fascist.
The guy seems to stand pretty alone with his opinion, judging from the audience reaction on curtain call (this video is from an earlier show though):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sDPweNH6fpE
It’s very strange that, of the very few sopranos singing this role internationally today, Mrs. Rae should evoke such a heckling incident. Her voice might not meet everybody’s taste, but she certainly has very good technique, and is enjoying continuous and tremendous success in leading coloratura roles in Europe. Certainly, much worse Zerbinettas have been heard at the Met in the last 30 years!
In any case, let’s not forget that heckling is not a valid form of “criticism”. It’s much more personal than a boo, and usually suggests base motives (or a pathological mental state) of some kind on the heckler’s side.
I agree with Robert: the fact that strong audience reactions belong to the tradition of opera doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to act like that today. Depending on how far you go back in history, theatre audiences also used to play cards, eat and drink, have intercourse (boxes are particularly good for that), urinate, and throw rotten fruit at actors. We wouldn’t want that today anymore, would we?
I was at Ariadne last night too, and I heard the comment about no technique. While the shout-out was definitely rude, it wasn’t inaccurate. Rae’s technique is flawed. She swallows her sound — it seems to be stuck in her throat, and it doesn’t emerge.
Davidsen, on the other hand, was quite impressive. I heard the broadcasts of Ariadne and Four Last Songs a few days ago, and I was not impressed. I also haven’t been bowled over by her recordings. That voice needs to be heard live, in the house. Some of the micro flaws get smoothed out, and the voice just sails. The Met hasn’t heard that kind of overwhelming sound since Norman and Nilsson.
The hackler did not interrupt the performance, but paid for her ticket and such she has the right to express her discontent with the quality. Mrs. Rae used to be a big talent 5-7 years ago (mostly in her Frankfurt/Munich tenure), but there is a major decline in her performances, she surely in her current form does not belong at the MET as Zerbinetta on the stage and I’ve hear three of her performances and in 47 of my professional opera life and had not heard a more mediocre Zerbinetta, than hers. Not everybody is Bill Berger who praises every singer of the MET (but he is paid for it). If I was the heckler I would waited for the end of the opera and did it at her solo curtain, not after the aria; but I do not hackle singers since I am involved in opera for 47 years professionally. To ban that person from the MET is ridiculous, the person did not scream profanities, did not interrupt the performance and such singers need to be ready to receive negative response for their performance and the MET should stop pretending that everything they present on the stage currently is OK or even 50% up to the standards since 2000.
She should have stopped singing and retorted, “so how come I’m here and you’re there?”
Back in the day, when most of the masterpieces were produced, opera audiences “reviewed” performances in progress. Favorably or negatively, out loud. It was part of the experience. Was opera worse off then?
Rudely voicing your worthless ‘opinion’, why, does that idiot not know that that is the reason NL provided a comment section on Slipped Disc?
There’s an interview with Anneliese Rothenberger on YouTube in which she addresses this idea that “it’s always been that way,” meaning people have always booed and yelled at performers from the audience. She said that in her experience that wasn’t true. It got worse over time. In the early years of her career, even in Italy, if you didn’t like how someone was signing, you applauded less or didn’t applaud at all. That matches my operagoing experience, too, which admittedly only reaches back to the 1980s.
Frankly, I find that behavior incomprehensibly nasty.
Singers, more than any other performance artist have such a difficult job because their performance depends on the condition of their voices which can change according to temperature, humidity, jet lag, sore throat, diet, emotional things, etc., etc. It is so cruel not to forgive a less than perfect performance by any musician, but, especially by a celebrated singer. I’d like to see those who are so critical get up before thousands of people and do the job perfectly.
Making music is not like boiling pasta, for heaven’s sake!
is this the same creep who yelled ‘NO HIGH F!’ after Camarena finished the last aria in ‘Puritani’??
Brenda Rae has no technique? That’s insane. Saw her in a filmed broadcast of Puritani from Washington D.C. last year and can’t remember having heard a more radiant and effortless coloratura and high Eb. Also I find the timbre quite beautiful. The vibrato in the middle range, and on sustained notes (not the high ones though) is a little on the strong side, yes. But still, as Zebinetta, I find her technique more solid than Damrau’s, Dessay’s and -certainly – Battle’s etc. Gruberova no one can touch in that role.