A few more words about booing

'Sing it again, you bum!':
A few words about booing and cheering

DAN ROTTENBERG

My own two cents’ worth about booing and cheering at the opera (see our recent piece by Diana Burgwyn) and the lack of same at the orchestra (about which see Dan Coren):

First, a remark I heard uttered years ago by Ned Garver, who pitched in the ’50s for the old St. Louis Browns, perennial cellar-dwellers in the American League:

“Playing for the Browns had its compensations. The fans didn’t dare boo us, because we had ’em outnumbered.”

My take: Booing (and cheering, too) is a way of manipulating other audience members to concur with your opinion of a performance. If everyone else seems to hate a show that you love, you tend to temper your enthusiasm— because, after all, can so many people be mistaken? But if the booers are clearly outnumbered by the supporters (or, in Garver’s case, by the players), then the intimidation works the other way around.

Performers often feed off the response of the audience. That’s why coaches and sportscasters talk about “getting the crowd into the game.” It’s why the Eagles had such a tough time playing before a unanimously hostile crowd at New Orleans last Sunday. It also explains why President Bush’s handlers take such care to screen his audiences for anyone who’s not a rabid Republican, and why he refused to address the NAACP convention for years unless he could be promised “a warm reception.”

The American tenor at La Scala

Second, a joke you probably already know. An American tenor is making his debut at La Scala. When he finishes his first aria he hears, amid the applause, shouts from the galleries to “Sing it again!” He signals to the conductor and sings an encore, only to be greeted once more by cries of “Sing it again!”— with which he complies. When he finishes, once more the crowd exhorts him to “Sing it again!” This time the excited but exhausted tenor begs the crowd’s indulgence.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he addresses the audience. “I’m overwhelmed by this reception. But I simply can’t sing this aria again.”

To which a voice in the uppermost balcony replies: “You sing it again, you bum, until you sing it right!”

My take: La Scala’s audiences may be notorious for their raucous behavior, but something more is involved than mere bad manners. These people perceive themselves as upholders of the highest operatic standards. They care deeply about opera and take it very personally. Which brings me to my third point:

Norman Carol, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s longtime concertmaster under Eugene Ormandy, once remarked to me that he wished the orchestra’s audiences cheered and booed at concerts. “If they were more demonstrative,” he reasoned, “we’d play more demonstratively.”

The do-it-yourself standing ovation

Fourth: Orchestra audiences do indeed possess an outlet for enthusiasm. It’s called the standing ovation, and it’s relatively easy to generate, especially if you sit downstairs. If a few people in the front rows stand up during the applause, folks behind them must stand as well in order to see the performers taking their bows, and before you know it everyone in the Kimmel is standing. When that happens, it’s difficult to remain stubbornly nailed to your seat without feeling like the bastard at a family reunion.

To be sure, a single “boo” here or there, like a drop of ink in an otherwise pure glass of water, can ruin a performance for everyone else. But a standing ovation works the other way: A single animated patron or two can generate a houseful of enthusiasm. Year ago my wife and I were wildly excited about some now-forgotten piano soloist who performed with the Orchestra. Amid the perfunctory applause that followed, I asked my wife, “Should we give him a standing ovation?” She agreed, and we did, and soon most everyone else in the Academy had followed our lead. Try it yourself some time.

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Secrets of the New York Philharmonic

A few things impressed me about the New York Philharmonic’s recent visit (January 12). When the Kimmel first opened five years ago, I noticed that I could hear individual instruments within the Philadelphia Orchestra for the first time. This was an exciting revelation, until it struck me that you’re not really supposed to hear individual instruments: You’re supposed to hear the orchestra as a whole. During the Bruckner Seventh Symphony, the New York Philharmonic played like a single instrument— the sort of velvet sound that the Philadelphia used to be known for in the Academy.

Aside from conductor Zubin Mehta— temporarily reunited with his old orchestra, perhaps as a favor to his son, the Kimmel’s programming director Mervon Mehta— the New Yorkers struck me as a much younger orchestra than their Philadelphia counterparts. I sensed a much higher proportion of women musicians as well— good lookers, too, many of them wearing sexy scoop-necked dresses. Virtually every seat in the Kimmel seemed taken. Perhaps the solution to finding younger classical audiences isn’t as mysterious as some music administrators believe.



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