Disrespectful Audiences

[laurie-rasmussen]

I once attended a concert by Andres Segovia, the celebrated classical guitarist, at the Ordway concert hall in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was nearly 90 years old at the time and still an absolutely brilliant musician. The acoustics in the Ordway are such that you can hear a pin drop and during the concert two ladies whispered loudly in one of the upper galleries, apparently oblivious to the fact that everyone in the place could hear every annoying word. They’d been gabbing for about a minute when Mr. Segovia suddenly stopped playing and damped his strings with a loud slap. He turned his gaze up toward the offending ladies and announced, “I will continue when you have finished.”

You can bet it was completely silent for the rest of the concert and we were all grateful. I will never forget how gracefully he handled that situation.

[adam-b-harris]

I don’t know if this story falls into the same category. A few years ago I

[David Ice]

Whew….judging from the reply, it sounds like my experience was far from unique.

[Jerusha Amado]

Dave,

This is a thread that is both interesting and also sad to read….

Jerusha

[Jessica Frost]

I’ve also really enjoyed this thread…I’ve heard all sorts of things whispered and even screeched during concerts so this is not a new revelation but a very sad one. Even when etiquette rules are posted blatantly in a program there’s still one or two idiots who will ignore them and do whatever they please….

There’s a relatively new dine-in movie theater in my town and one of the ads at the beginning of a movie shows the scene from “Gremlins” where the theater blows up at the end with all the Gremlins inside. At the end of that clip the screen reads something like “No talking during the movie or we’ll take you out.” It follows with “…and texting totally counts as talking.” It finishes with a screen that informs you that if someone complains about your party you’ll get one warning…after that you’ll be asked to leave with no refund. It’s the kind of theater where you write your food order on a ticket and leave it standing on your table so it can be easily grabbed by a waiter/waitress. It’s easier to complain about people because they don’t know if you’re ordering food or making a complaint. I’ve had to complain twice about people in a movie and both times I was not the only person to complain and they were asked to leave. Maybe that’s what we need for classical concerts, operas, plays!

[dawn-penland]

I was at a cello concert years ago where someone in the front row was moving their leg and it wasn’t in time with the music.

[Susan Abken]

I’m glad I’m not alone in wondering whatever happened to American manners. Several years ago, playing the prelude on Christmas Eve at my own church in Charlotte, some young, perhaps drunken young man shouted, “Bring out the bass!” (It was just fine, thank you.)

Another time I played an Advent event for a large church gathering of women in Charlotte while quite physically ill, losing a pound a day without trying and fighting short-term memory losses, but my name was already printed in the expensive programs, so I kept the engagement. One tall, thin, older man appeared at this event and made a running nasty commentary during the entire performance of background music, at one time getting up from his seat and leaning over me to deliver nasty remarks.

This same “gentleman” had mocked my husband and me, formerly avid concert-goers, right after we moved here when we attended our first ticketed early music concert in this town, saying aloud to all of the other concert-goers, “WHO are THEY???!” Needless to say, I hardly felt welcomed and quit subscribing. We have a CD collection, and can receive public radio.

I suspect the stalker has a major character defect such as Tourette’s Syndrome and have forgiven him, but I’ve learned to choose my audiences very carefully and do not attend AHS meetings here because the attitude there is the same. Who chooses to be a victim? That “gentleman” is the type one has to forgive, and forgive, and forgive yet again.

The best audiences I’ve seen were in the Washington, DC, area, and Atlanta was mannerly, but Charlotte is the pits. It has to do with education levels and what people learn at home and in school, and also with what a city expects of its citizens, or doesn’t. When we moved here, I was met with two phone calls, three days apart, from some young woman who claimed to be a friend of an established harpist and hissed at me that I “dare not gig in this town.” Those nasty calls were nine years ago. They like to fight here.

The musicians here, and too many locals, really lack manners, but they are simply a symptom of a larger national problem, a reflection of a society in steep decline.

[barbara-brundage]

Ah, but is it new? From The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, talking about attending the opera at the Academy of Music in NYC in the early 1870s;

>As Madame Nilsson’s “M’ama!” thrilled out above the silent house (the boxes always stopped talking during the Daisy Song) a warm pink mounted to the girl’s cheek…

and

>”After all,” he heard one of the younger men begin behind him (everybody talked through the Mephistopheles-and-Martha scenes), “after all, just what happened?”

[carl-swanson]

You’re right Barbara. It’s always been around.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

I related this before, but Zabaleta was doing a recital in Carnegie Hall, and he stopped after the first piece and said something inaudible. He stopped midway through the second piece, got up from the harp, went to the front of the stage, and started yelling at someone to get out. It turns out an older man had fallen asleep and was snoring. He wouldn’t leave, but he managed to stay awake, apparently. Unfortunately, as we couldn’t hear the problem, it made Zabaleta look temperamental.

[sally-james]

Everything old is new again, it seems. I wish I could post a picture of this famous Pannini painting, but linked below is a fascinating description of the ‘Fete Musicale’ of 1747, with a link to a photo.

This action-packed orchestra concert painting is a thousand times funnier than a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ crowd scene! :

http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2005/02/also_at_the_louvre.html

[David Ice]

I saw a modern painting of an orchestra along the same lines…..the Scottsdale Symphony even had a print of it.

[kreig-kitts]

A novel set in Italy, either “Farewall to Arms” or “Where Angels Fear to Tread” as I read them both the same year and remember this from one of them, has a scene at the opera where the crowd yells and cheers throughout, and fans throw flowers at the singer during her aria and regularly burst into raucous

[alexander-rider]

It is ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’, Kreig!! Love it.

[shelby-m]

Oh yes!

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