Yesterday Alma Boykin, fellow author, fellow blogger and friend of long standing, wrote on her blog:
It is a good reminder to treat the road crew well, wherever we are. Or we will end up like the infamous performance of Tosca, where the stage crew replaced the pad for the diva’s dramatic leap with a trampoline. She wasn’t hurt, but ooooh, her ego suffered.
Click over to her place to read the rest of her article.
In my younger days, half a world away from here, I used to dabble in amateur dramatics. I never graced (?) the opera stage, but took part (as an enthusiastic amateur) in theater productions by CAPAB (the Cape Performing Arts Board). Highlight (?) of my theatrical career (?) was a performance of the musical Oklahoma! in Cape Town. I initially had only a crowd scene or two as an extra, but some of the local male singers proved to have difficulty hitting some of the tenor high notes, so I was duly roped in to add vocal enhancement to those scenes. It was weird, but it helped . . . or so I'm told.
With that background, I know many of the stories about opera, theater, etc. I found an article that repeats many of them, and I thought you might enjoy them too. Here's an excerpt.
Another delightful, but probably apocryphal, anecdote is the one which allegedly happened at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco – to the same “Bouncing Tosca” from Chicago.
The firing squad were played by supernumeraries who received last minute instruction to shoot the person they found onstage, and then to exit with the principals. However, When they got onstage, they discovered there were two people there instead of one. Not knowing which one to shoot, they wavered back and forth a bit as both principals said not to shoot them. They finally settled on Tosca, shot her, and looked bewildered when Mario keeled over dead. They also did not leave, since they were told to exit with the principals – and neither of the principals were exiting. Tosca made some gestures to shoo them away, but they remained onstage until Spoletta came in with the soldiers. When Tosca jumped from the parapet, they saw their chance to finally exit with at least one of the principals, and jumped down after her, giving a Shakespearean greatness to the final tragedy.
There's more at the link.
Another article reports:
OPERA singer Fabio Armiliato must be thinking that Tosca is his profession's equivalent of Macbeth as a work of ill luck.
Appearing as the eponymous heroine's beloved, Mario Cavaradossi, in the production's first night at the open-air arena in Macerata last week, he was stretchered off near the end of the opera after being hit in the leg by debris from blanks fired in the execution scene.
For Friday night's performance, the tenor bravely hobbled back on stage - then fell and broke his other leg in two places while standing in the wings at the end of the first Act. He returned to hospital by ambulance, commenting from his stretcher: "Could it be that I am destined never to leave this theatre on my own two feet?"
. . .
At a performance of Rigoletto in Chile in 1970, as the tenor Louis Quilico threw his head back to start singing, a feather floated down from the rafters straight into his mouth. He passed out without uttering a sound.
Rather higher drama was on offer in Montevideo in 1934 when an orchestra member pulled out a gun and killed the conductor in mid-performance. It turned out that the conductor, Franco Paolantonio, had been sleeping with his wife.
Again, more at the link.
I'll try to look up the hysterically funny misadventures of an English pantomime show, that I recall reading about many years ago. If I can find them, I'll publish them for your enjoyment.
Peter
