A Night Without Nessun Dorma: What do opera boos say about UK audiences? | Opera

HeyPera fans take pride in knowing when and how to make noise. The shouts of “bravo”, “brava” and “bravi” have become a popular part of the tradition, with approval seen as evidence of taste.

Boos also have a long history, and as one brave soul at the Royal Opera House discovered on Tuesday night, their impact can sometimes seem a little more pronounced.

The incident occurred during a performance of Puccini’s Turandot when tenor Roberto Alagna, singing Prince Calaf, became ill after the second act and had to withdraw.

The company’s head of music, Richard Hetherington, sang gallantly from the wings while choreographer Tatiana Novaes Coelho performed the role on stage. But when the third act resumed without Nessun Dorma due to the song’s technical difficulty, the decision sparked boos from some audience members angry that one of the opera’s most famous moments had been missed.

While this may seem harsh on the situation, it does not appear that the public’s discontent was directed at him personally. After Tuesday’s performance, one X user criticized ROH for not having a replacement performer available to “perform the version of Nessun Dorma that they’ve been singing in the bathroom since puberty.” The RBO said Calàf is not the type of role the cover typically stands on during every performance.

Opera historian Flora Wilson said Hetherington may also be comforted by opera’s long history of booing, although audiences in Britain are generally more conservative than in Italy.

“Opera seems to elicit more vocal reactions than spoken plays or musicals, but the booing is mostly directed at opera singers, whose job it is to perform frankly astonishing feats of athleticism every night,” she said.

Wilson compared the way audiences respond to opera singers to football. She added: “But of course shouting and cheering on a football field does not actually prevent the match from continuing in the way that a wave of booing can disrupt an unamplified music show.”

At Covent Garden, there was a riot in 1809, when the theater management raised ticket prices, Wilson said. There were also protests at several operas in 1840 because the star baritone of the time, Antonio Tamburini, was not hired for the season.

In those days, theater operated on a subscription system, so audiences felt an immediate sense of ownership and the right to complain when their preferences were not a priority. Today, UK opera houses, including the ROH, are run on a different model.

“Audience demographics have changed dramatically over the past two centuries,” Wilson said. “In combination with broader shifts in audience behavior in classical music – which saw audiences begin to sit in silence throughout performances – opera audiences in general became much less vocal.”

John Berry, former artistic director of the English National Opera and co-director of the second script, said he had been in European theaters where the booing began in the interlude. “It’s a tradition in some theaters but it’s not common in the UK,” he said.

Traditionally, creative teams receive the brunt of the booing at the curtain, Perry said, and some directors are “well prepared to put on their hard hats before they get on stage.” But while some isolated booing doesn’t impact a show’s success, Perry said he always finds booing singers “disgusting,” especially when social media gives audiences the tools to vent their displeasure.

He added: “Singers are human beings. Sometimes they progress, and sometimes their voices disappear completely within an hour.” “Although it’s very disappointing, these things happen — it’s a live show, not a movie, and that’s what makes the whole live theater experience so powerful and unpredictable.”

Martin Kettle, a former Guardian columnist and opera fan, said sometimes booing “can reflect listeners’ passion” for the way they want opera to sound. He added: “But it can be very rude, and we live in an increasingly rude culture. Social media is often aggressive and I think that translates to the opera house.”

Keitel witnessed a particularly harsh incident of booing at ROH once, when a heckler shouted “nonsense” at a 12-year-old actor during a production of Handel’s opera “Alcina.” The heckler was drowned out by the cheers of the rest of the audience (and was banned for life from the venue). “It was terrible,” he said. “It is often an affirmation of a reactionary and narrow view of what opera should be.”

Opera critic Tim Ashley said pantomime-type booing particularly concerned him, “where people boo a villainous or flawed character, regardless of the quality of the performance. That can be annoying and very unfair to the singers.”

Ashley witnessed this during production of Madama Butterfly in ROH a few years ago. When Marcelo Puente, who plays Pinkerton, closed the curtain, he was greeted with boos, even though he gave what Ashley described as “one of the most complete and convincing portrayals of the role that has been heard for some time.”

For Wilson, Tuesday night’s events represented a “perfect operatic storm.” Alagna is a big-name star in the opera world, Turandot is a popular opera – often described as a great first opera for those who want to try this art form – and Nessun Dorma is the most famous three-minute musical in all of opera.

“For better or worse, that hit song will be the main reason some audience members want to see Turandot — and the idea that it could suddenly be cut off mid-performance may seem outrageous,” she said.