Angela Gheorghiu blows up co-star’s encore
OperaFrom the Korea Times:
Renowned soprano Angela Gheorghiu caused a stir during a performance of Puccini’s “Tosca” in Seoul, halting the orchestra and interrupting her co-star’s mid-show encore, much to the dismay of opera enthusiasts who had eagerly anticipated her performance.
The incident occurred during Sunday’s performance at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, when Gheorghiu, regarded as one of the greatest opera singers of all time, abruptly took to the stage midway through the third act, as Korean tenor Alfred Kim was performing an encore of the famous aria “E lucevan le stelle” in response to the audience’s enthusiastic applause and requests for more.
The Romanian soprano signaled for the orchestra to stop and although conductor Jee Joong-bae initially tried to continue, he eventually halted the music in response to Gheorghiu’s persistent gestures. The soprano then said, “Excuse me. It’s a performance. It’s not a recital. Respect me.”…
Read on here.
Your ego is not your amigo.
Obviously, a great(er) fault here is with the author, Park Jin-hai, who writes “Gheorghiu, regarded as one of the greatest opera singers of all time”. The level of Callas, Tebaldi, Caballé, Sutherland, Horne, or Price? Me thinks definitely not.
You rollout the Premier League of sopranos, Gheorgiu is nowhere near them, though was very good earlier in her career in the right repertoire (e.g. Mimi – NOT Tosca!)
Different era…Then we had Callas, Tebaldi, Caballe, now we have Fleming, Gheorghiu, Netrebko..whether we like it or not, there is no other living soprano today besides them with such a long career and so many recordings as their legacy in the opera world…The Opera industry is declining so much lately: opera houses are not selling tickets anymore (twenty years ago, one would wait in a big que in order to barely get a ticket for a performance in the big houses), recording companies will be extinct in a few years, the “mistery” surrounding an artist is gone as we know see everything they do on social media (even when they cook, clean, rehearse or go on holidays), younger artists do not have the courage to speak up (they accept anything, anywhere), young people’s interest in classical music is almost non-existent and so on…so who knows what we will have 50-100 years from now (no one?:D) and who will our kids remember from the past as the greatest sopranos, tenors and conductors “of all time”..Time will tell. I think comparisons are useless in art, as each artist is unique. I think we can all like someone more or not, we can agree to disagree, while respecting one another.
That is so true- ‘comparisons are useless in art’. I wish everyone on this site had the same views instead of people being so unkind and abusive. Some great stars, men and women, are poor in certain operas and magnificent in others. Every opera star excels in different ways and some have an extensive repertoire.
The author wrote “…Gheorghiu, regarded as one of the greatest opera singers of all time” not “one of the greatest opera singers of her generation”. I hope we can agree, Gheorghiu is not on the same level as Callas, Tebaldi, etc…
THAT Alfred Kim…?!
What was that old adage? “Singers have sinuses where they should have brains.”
Well, they don’t do encores except under truly extraordinary circumstances, (and I doubt this tenor is Franco Corelli reincarnated) for good reason as we see here. Bad behavior by Ms Gheorgiu nonetheless.
You miss the point. These are extraordinary circumstances. The Koreans are enormously proud of their tenor (and could care less if he is not the reincarnation of a singer they never heard of). They evidently demanded the encore. It was surely the highlight of the whole evening for them.
That’s fair enough and it’s wonderful they have a fine tenor they can cheer on. It makes Ms Gheorgiu’s behavior even less acceptable. Still, anyone who is serious about opera who hasn’t heard of Corelli needs a visit to Youtube pronto……..much the same could be said of Callas.
The greatest Soprano ever! You have to be joking. She’s just an opionated B**t
This is no place for such hatred and abuse. ‘Greatest’ is a matter of personal opinion but there is no need to be so insulting.
Well, you know, she has some traumatic memories about this encore…
https://slippedisc.com/2016/04/watch-angela-gheorghiu-misses-cue-keeps-kaufmann-waiting-on-vienna-stage/
My thoughts exactly..and to top that, yesterday was also her birthday and, in all honesty, she was invited and presented as the special guest to perform in this new production..I do not necessarily agree with what she did, but I can understand where she was coming from..she has been performing now for more than 30 years (who can say that nowadays? besides Domingo haha). Gheorghiu is a big name whether people like it or not. We wouldn’t be talking about her if she wasn’t. Unfortunately, a woman demanding respect is seen as egotistical. She said multiple times she does not agree with encores during an opera performance. We probably won’t know the full story. Many encores are agreed today between the artist and the conductor beforehand..for publicity reasons (for the artist, for the production..). This information is legit as it comes from a tenor and good friend of mine..anyway, I wish everyone well. I just hope people would stop the hate, it doesn’t make anyone better hiding behind a screen and commenting nasty things. Cheers!
So true. There is a hell of a lot of hate against Angela Gheorghiu and it is very corrosive. The 2016 Vienna incident was also misinterpreted and misreported by many. The stage manager in Vienna did not give Gheorghiu the cue because of the encore. I know that for a fact.
“Unfortunately, a woman demanding respect is seen as egotistical. She said multiple times she does not agree with encores during an opera performance.”
Whether or not someone else sings an encore is not her decision to make.
I just reread the excuses allotted to Ms Gheorghiu’s failure to enter Act III at that 2016 Staatsoper “Tosca”.
Gheorghiu and Kaufmann did two shows. At the first, he encored the aria due to an audience which simply would not allow the performance to continue.
I attended the second performance where the music kept playing and Kaufmann turned around and on the notes written for “Ah! Franchigia a Floria Tosca…” he instead hesitated a second and then sang “Ah! Abbiamo no soprano…”.
I have it on good faith from someone backstage that the soprano in question had not been detained in any way. Indeed, she had to leave her dressing room and go down a flight of stairs to make her Act III entrance in Margarethe Wallmann’s 1958 production, in which Tosca enters via a staircase below stage level.
La soprano had been angered at the encore at the previous performance and simply decided to not go onstage. “They make me wait, so I make him wait” was overheard.
They were scheduled for two performances again in 2017; they both sang the first; at the second, the role of Floria Tosca was sung by Martina Serafin.
This reminds me of some famous words by Maria Callas “Don’t talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddam rules.”….Anyway, I would also be against an encore from Alfred Kim
A fictional quotation.
She has form, having once failed to return to the stage promptly after Kaufmann sang an encore (of the same aria, coincidentally).
Not coincidentally. The audience demand encore because of Puccini, not because of the singers. Kaufmann sings a lot of operas and he encores only a few arias including this one in Tosca.
What Daniel Kim tried to do, encoring an aria, is certainly well within the Italian tradition.
What Gheorghiu did in Korea, she never would’ve dared to do in Italy: stopping a popular Italian tenor, in an Italian opera house, led by an Italian conductor, with an Italian audience clamoring for an encore.
The Koreans were too polite and submissive to a big name foreigner (albeit a has-been) to have thrown tomatoes at her, as a La Scala audience certainly would’ve.
Well, they say Korea is the Italy of Asia. I don’t know if that’s entirely true but this is still very on-brand for her. I guess at 59 she feels like she can do what she wants and get away with it.
What has her age got to do with it? It is also disrespectful for any opera star to encore in opera and the conductor should not be part of it either.
The best conductors would simply continue their music: Michel Plasson, Georges Pretre, Daniel Oren. Save the encores for concerts.
We don’t carry tomatoes in our pockets. I understand she was booed and she is facing a serious backlash from Koreans.
I appreciate your comment supporting our rage (although I don’t live there any longer), but don’t ever fucking call us submissive. Then we’re good
Best comment so far. Thank you. You just stated the facts and that’s good.
“We don’t carry tomatoes in our pockets.”
That’s my point, the Italians do.
The loggionisti della Scala come prepared, come looking for a wrong note, a wrong vibrato.
The Italians make opera singers tremble with fear, the Koreans don’t.
You’re telling us the loggionisti can hurl a tomato from the loggia and have it hit someone on stage?
The question is, would they have demanded an encore from Alfred Kim in Italy?
You win the prize for most irrelevant comment.
Or in Toulouse
Ha! I wonder how many people get the reference. Clever!
Is she really so good that companies have to put up with her? From the article: “In 2016, she refused to continue a performance of “Tosca” in Vienna after tenor Jonas Kaufmann performed an encore mid-show, delaying the production and forcing Kaufmann to apologize to the audience.”
Again! Remember her Tosca incident at Vienna Staatsoper when Jonas Kaufmann repeated E lucevan le stelle…! DIVA, and not one of the greatest of today!
well Kaufmann is a total divo but no one ever criticises him. He actually performed his aria better first time than second. He treated the opera as a personal concert. But I still like Kaufmann in some productions. Vienna was unfortunate because the Austrian audience favoured him. I wish everyone could remember there are just as many ego-centric male stars as female ones.
I think you joke about Kaufmann. He has to put up with more criticism than any other male singer. He does not deserve it. Neither does he deserve being called a divo. For certain he is not.
Last time I can remember a male opera star disrupting a performance from the stage was at La Scala in 2006, when Roberto Alagna (Gheorghiu’s ex-husband, as it happens) walked offstage and out of the theater after he got some boos for his “Celeste Aïda.”
And he was pilloried for it. Fired from La Scala, too.
So I don’t think this is an instance of not tolerating behavior from females that would be tolerated from males.
Trashy and egotistical behavior. She is a phenomenal singer, but narcissistic to the Nth degree. Were an encore demanded of “Vissi d’arte”, she would most likely happily oblige – but “Respect me”?! How about “Respect your colleagues!”
Actually she never once responded to calls of ‘bis’ in an opera in her career. Only in concerts or recitals.
Alfred Kim as Cavaradossi, Samuel Youn as Scarpia, that’s already great casting. Why bother with AG and all the trouble it invariably entails?
Apparently Gheorghiu is a follower of the great Toscanini who dismissed calls for an encore, followed by a total ban, at La Scala from the beginning of 20th century.
it was not the first time she did it,,,
yesterday was her birthday so I published my 20 years old article.
Pity. I liked her. Once upon a time
https://basiaconfuoco.com/2021/09/07/angela-gheorghiu-i-am-a-star-always-have-been/
There’s no ego like that possessed by any singer who believes his/her own PR puff. La Draculeti always had an ego greater than her talents.
There is too much hatred and also racism- ‘Draculette’ because she is Romanian is offensive even if she did laugh at the nickname. Everyone can argue one opera star is good or bad or greater than another, but if people really do not like Angela, they do not need to see or hear her perform.
The race is now on to see if she can out-crazy Kathy Battle.
Kaufmann, in Wien: “Non abbiamo il soprano…”
For me, the most upsetting thing is that audiences never demand an encore of the Shepherd Boy solo.
I heard Kim sing Don Carlos a few years ago, in Wiesbaden. The best I ever heard it. And this diva has a record. In Monte-Carlo’s Amico Fritz, she stopped the conductor not once but twice, mid-premiere, accusing him of conducting at a different tempo than rehearsed. The truth was that she had forgotten her text… But her Mimi at ROH is still the best I ever heard…
Diplomacy is not one of her strenghts, that’s for sure, but she was essentially right.
Like Toscanini, La Gheorghiu is the sun that makes stars disappear.
Ultimately if the audience is so enthusiastic that an encore is permitted before the opera can continue, then it is the audience being respected and that is the right way around.
After all ‘ The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give….’
In terms of respect for the artiste, who has given us some wonderful Mimis and Violettas and happy memories to her public, I personally would rather hear her sing a recital of beautiful songs in well chosen keys for her voice than an opera these days.
Other singers have retired from the operatic stage and then pleased their public with some delightful concerts . De Los Angeles, Ileana Cotrubas as examples.
i agree with no encores in the midst of a performance, because the art should come first then the singers. That said, her behaviour is unacceptable- I also disagree with her being one of the greatest of all times, hold your horses
“…art should come first then the singers.” Opera is entertainment. Nothing less, nothing more. Placing it on the curio shelf to be dusted occasionally will surely signal its death. Singers breathe life into opera.
Angela Gheorghiu is right; an opera is not a recital. A conductor should not respond to calls for ‘bis’, as it shows a lack of respect for other singers in the production. Many opera houses do not encourage encores because often the performer may give a poor second rendition of their big aria. Maybe the audience favours one local star over the others, and the flow of an opera is broken by an encore.
Why is Gheorghiu labelled a petulant diva and a tenor is never a petulant divo?
Several years ago, the prima donna in question refused to come back on stage to sing an encore with the Philadelphia Orchestra; she apparently didn’t feel that the audience had applauded the arias in her printed program vociferously enough to warrant one. Charles Dutoit, who was on the podium that evening, began conducting Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro,” but…no Gheorghiu! Dutoit abruptly cut off the orchestra, and that was that!
It’s truly unfortunate to witness an artist of her calibre in decline as she gets older. Rather than responding with frustration, it would be more compassionate to approach the situation with understanding. Her behaviour in the last years seems out of the ordinary and indicates that she’s facing significant mental health struggles.
Why is it a soprano at 59 is seen as one in decline but a tenor is still in his prime? She may not have the range she once had, and yes stars have egos, but ‘mental health struggles is unfair’.
Why can’t men be petulant divos too? They certainly exist in the opera world.
Sorry, no. Her dressing room at the Vienna State Opera is less than 20 feet from the edge of the stage where she would enter. If she was paying any attention, she could hear the music over the loudspeaker in her room and know exactly where they were in the music.
Pardon my French, but this is the best shit ever!
Anybody who asks for respect has already lost it.
What a shameful behaviour.
Yes. Respect is earned, not demanded. The latter is obedience.
Gheorghiu was just being the egocentric troublemaker she has always been. She’s entitled to have her opinion about encores but not to ruin a performance by broadcasting her opinion during it.
Encores were a normal part of opera when it was a going thing. Verdi appreciated them. He regularly gave three encores of individual movements, and sometimes as many as five, when he conducted the Requiem. People whose understanding surpasses Verdi’s may well disagree, however.
From the bird’s eye/rafters view though, this feels like a healthy wrangle to remind of the vitality in live performance, where anything can happen, and protocol is at least debatable. Evidently “she should have known better” about an evident custom in Korea for there to be mid-opera encores, but why not leave room for the argument (I’m very persuaded) that it’s fundamentally wrong? At least she’s fighting for a principle (rue the day when nobody bothers); she wasn’t self-motivated because she declined to give her own encore for easy adulation.
Opera is fundamentally theatre. I don’t want actors repeating sections of a play for ego boosts and audiences taking over the drama. The best result that could evolve from this conflict, is that the evident tradition there of mid-opera encores simply dies at last.
These singers belong in a century when self-important sopranos habitually counted the bars to see if a rival was singing more, introduced arias from other operas when it suited them and even sang sotto voce when they were in a bad temper. My advice to them is ‘grow up’.