How Covent Garden’s boy booer got frozen out
NewsWe all know what happened at Covent Garden.
A man stood up during Handel’s Alcina on Tuesday night and booed a 12 year-old schoolboy who was singing Oberto’s aria in the second act of Handel’s Alcina.
The immediate result was a roaring curtain call for the little boy and a statement by Covent Garden that the booer had been identified and would be banned indefinitely from the opera house.
Less conspicuous was the man’s early departure during or just after the second act.
He faced a certain amount of shushing and tutting from those around him as he stood and booed. But what followed, we hear, was even more interesting. The people in the surrounding seats made clear, in a silent and very English way, that his continued presence was unacceptable. The man was frozen out, sent to Coventry, blackballed from the club.
Like Gavin Williamson, he stepped out ‘to clear his name’.
Like Captain Oates in Scott of the Antarctic, he may be gone awhile.
Sociologists will have a field day with this incident.
The young man with the reedy voice and flat singing is now celebrated as a young star in the making. An old cynic like myself could ask himself whether he did not pay the booer. Booing seems to sell even better than sex these days.
How can CG enforce this ban ? The “boo-er” could get somebody to buy the tickets on his behalf and wear a false moustache.
Anyway, Alcina is such a 4-hour bore, he probably added a bit of life to the proceedings
Oh, for goodness sake what a nasty piece of work you are. Were you there? If not shut up!
Perhaps IP was more than ‘there’….
Yes, just think of Florence Foster Jenkins’ Carnegie Hall debut.
It was sold out weeks before, and mockers, scoffers, critics, and cynical bastards could no longer be contained.
a “howling buoy”
– pronounced the American way –
To return briefly to this sorry episode, if the boy’s voice was, in fact, reedy and if he did sing flat, why was he allowed to embody that role on a stage such as Covent Garden’s? There are many very good young singer/actors in the UK – I’ve worked with enough of them in productions of Albert Herring, Turn of the Screw etc – so there’s really no need to cast someone who is not up to the task.
That said, I’m not defending this man’s behaviour – which was clearly boorish and unnecessary – but it’s cheap to suggest it was racially motivated, as some have (predictably) already implied.
Boy trebles are frequently reedy and/or out of tune. There are enough recordings and performances of The Magic Flute to attest to that. I have little doubt that Royal Opera casting selected and coached appropriately. It was also the first night, so nerves possibly at work too. While I would never direct disapproval mid-performance at one performer, 13 or 50, the word he used does seem to apply to so much of Handel’s operas! I like the twiddly bits but you have to suffer sooo much to get to those couple of minutes!
On a *professional* stage, booing is fair game regardless of the age of the performer, provided that the booing is done in a manner that does not disrupt the performance itself (i.e.: the booer should wait until the curtain call). I will not comment on the singing itself, since I was not at the performance in question. The booer’s crime was that he interrupted the performance.
Booing is ungentlemanlike, ghastly behaviour. Very unbritish.
Leave it to the Italians in Milan!
We British don’t boo.
Clearly you haven’t attended many performances where there has been vociferous booing then – generally these days, aimed at the Director and their team rather than individual performers.
Good for you….you probably applaud everything…..LOL
It is acutely uncomfortable when someone sings flat though personally I’d never boo a musician as I feel it is cowardly all the more as he’s certainly doing his best.
If unhappy with the performance, we can always sit on our hands and not applaud. There is no need to interrupt the performance by booing. There are civilised ways of showing dissatisfaction.
But doesn’t a dissatisfied person have the same right to utter vocal expressions of emotion than a satisfied person?
Btw, standing ovations and bravos have become rather inflationary these days…
EXACTLY!!!!
I very often quietly remain in my seat while the rest of the audience indulges in the now seemingly obligatory standing ovation if I feel that the performance was sub-standard.
I would never think of interrupting even a terrible performance with boos. (Booze – maybe.) The performers are all trying hard to do their best. At least, courteously allow them to “do their thing”.
The proper punishment should be that the booer is required to stand up on that stage and attempt to sing that same aria to a full house.
No more arm-chair critics and backseat drivers.
The booer is not claiming to be a singer, any more than the singer could claim to be an expert in the booer’s line of work. Many people attending an opera performance, however, can lay claim to a sufficiently educated ear to appreciate good or bad singing. I recently went to a choral concert where I had to endure an hour’s worth of out-of-tune harmony. It was very painful. I didn’t boo, my applause was measured (more in recognition of their efforts) yet I left the venue feeling I’d wasted my evening. This man at the ROH felt he needed to vent his frustration differently. It may have hurt the singer, but, I’m sorry, it’s a hard business and the sooner you learn how to take the knocks, the better you’ll be served later on, if he’s fortunate and hard-working enough to make it.
A sad fact of life is that, if you want to make it on the stage, you need to be prepared to accept the lows with the highs, no matter how old you are, no matter when they may come. Cosseting someone because of their age, even if they’ve chosen to be judged on one of the main stages of the world, is misguided and ultimately dangerous.
Common sense is starting to prevail.
The commenters that are justifying, or less damningly, trying to make sense of this should remember when the opera was written, in Mozart times exposing a child too such ridicule would have troubled nobody.
But we are not in Mozart times, we are in the 21st century and now we have, or should have, an appreciation of what a traumatic experience could do to a young boy.
I can’t imagine what kind of person can think that “oh gosh, that boy sings awfully, I’m booing now” is a civilised action. That’s the attitude of a football hooligan not of a cultured person.
I’m in the fence about booing an adult performer, I find the most damning thing one can do is do nothing when an artist is mediocre, those awful times when an artist just poured its soul to be met with a stony silence stay with me far more than the occasional booer.
As for the “we British don’t boo” palaver, oh goodness, give me strength…
I think the worst thing we can do is bang on about trauma. If children are overprotected from truth and criticism and aren’t encouraged to process it and be robust about it, they never learn to cope.
Considering the state of operatic singing nowadays….why would one even go to hear these nonentities and waste one`s breath booing – after the curtain has fallen , of course …