Man is flung out for filming on phone
NewsThe Eva Marton singing competition in Budapest was won this weekend by a Korean tenor, Jihoon Park, 33. It was not without incident.
Our man on the spot reports:
In his semi-final Jihoon Park sang two arias. First was from La Boheme. Second was from Massenet’s Manon, the weakest of the 7 arias he sang over the three rounds. He finished at 46 minutes and 20 seconds on the ensuing livecast:
What you don’t hear on YouTube but was very very audible in the hall was that, in the last minute of singing, we heard parts of his performance being played back. My first thought was that this was a technical glitch on. It wasn’t — someone in the audience had been filming and managed to start playing back his recording before the singer had finished.
At 46 minutes and 20 seconds you see Eva Marton get very angry. She breaks in before the applause can start, starts pointing towards the area from which the play-back had come and makes comments. She then apologies to the tenor, ask the audience to applaud. The tenor bows and leaves.
Eva Marton then rises from her seat and talks directly to the area of the hall again from which the play-back had come. It’s clear the ‘guilty’ part does not speak Hungarian. She then says in English that he must leave and asks one of the ushers to make this happen. You see an usher somewhat sheepishly identifying the responsible man — who is older rather than younger. He is marched out of the hall.
I have seen this happen at football games but never seen it happen at a concert or competition. I heard some discussion on whether she had been too strict. But at the start of each session we were told that mobile phones should be turned off and this message was repeated on the TV screens showing the singers and their arias. So I think she had good grounds for getting so angry.
In a way it’s a good exercise for the competitors. Once they’re in the business, out in the real world they will have to deal with (or learn to ignore) inconsiderate audience members all the time.
I was at a performance of Mahler’s 10th in Berlin under Daniel Harding when a flash went off from the seats behind the orchestra. Harding didn’t openly react, but I certainly was annoyed.
What sort of raised-in-a-barn yahoo not only shoots video despite being asked not to during a performance but starts playback before the artist has finished?
Our developing society, “connected” as never before…at the cost of simple human decency, which is afflicted at every turn by the manners of those whose heads are stuck looking at phone screens. The tolerance for this sort of rubbish has seen disrupted classrooms, offices and family dinner tables, let alone the traffic consequences of people not looking at what actually exists in their rush to see what is on a screen.
Bravo to Ms. Marton.
Answer: somebody brought up by wolves, who’ve been very busy with the most recent generations of young people. Mostly.
The unfortunate incident aside, I normally find these competitions boring beyond belief (having sat through countless Met National Council Finals Concerts). However, I tuned in to the live stream of the Eva Marton Semi-Finals and got hooked for several hours.
The level of singing across the board was unusually high. (My personal picks did not win…). Overall, time well spent.
It’s about time the Empire Stikes Back !!!
I think that Miss Marton was absolutely justified in her actions. At least she didn’t push the older gent up against a wall, as she once did backstage to a colleague in Houston when the audience was laughing at an unfortunately translated surtitle!
But I still remember an evening at The Wigmore in 1980 when Rita Streich was giving her last London recital with Geoffrey Parsons at the piano.
Geoffrey’s partner Erich Vietheer was sitting in back with a small tape recorder on his lap and in between songs managed to play back a few bars of the previous song instead of releasing the pause switch.
Much consternation and merriment all around. It still makes me giggle nearly half a century later.
Rita Streich. Now there’s a name you don’t hear much these days.
She did well. Concert artists, promoters and conductors need to understand that illicit recordings are a breach of the composer’s copyright, if the music was composed during his or her lifetime, or recorded within 70 years of demise).
No-one should put up with this in classical concerts, where copyright issues abound. It should be challenged, at all times.
No ‘ifs’. The music has to have been conposed suring the life of the composer .. otherwise your comment makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and begs the question as to who composed it, or even how, if not during their lifetime?
So filming is OK but playing back is not. Got it.
Grow up.
Brava to Eva Marton – even if, in my memory of her performances, she impersonated very well that celebrote diva, Herda Wobbel!
I know I’ve told this story here before. That was a long time ago, so I believe it may be time for an encore.
I attended a performance of Enid Bagnold’s “A Matter of Gravity” at the Broadhurst Theatre in early 1976 when, upon her entrance from an offstage garden with a basket of flowers in one hand and a cane in the other, Katharine Hepburn reached centre stage when a flash from the audience assaulted her.
She swung around, marched downstage, raised her cane and shouted “Get that pig out of this theatre!” and signalled for the curtain to come down.
Her commands were obeyed.
At the end of the show, she raised her hands to halt the standing ovation and apologised to the audience. She began with “I’m sorry, but if someone wants to ruin your good time and mine…” before she was drowned-out by bravos and applause.
Classical music is NOT a religion…just because the music is old…the thinking shouldn’t be!