Last Minute Cast or Artist substitutions.

[Guest]

There must be many many different experiences amongst us all.
I will begin with Karl Böhm. He was due to conduct a Brahms first and third in May 1979 at the RFH.
The cancellation due to illness was announced a couple of days before, but when the substitute conductor was announced, the rush for all remaining tickets was of Avalanche proportions.
The substitute - Sergiu Celibidache!
what a concert.

[pastoralguy]

My father heard Bob Dylan in the late 60's in Vancouver on an occasion where the support act got snowed out. Dylan walked on to the stage and said 'well, you've paid for three hours so let's see what songs I can remember from my youth'. Three and a half hours later, the concert finished!

[pastoralguy]

There must be many many different experiences amongst us all.
I will begin with Karl Böhm. He was due to conduct a Brahms first and third in May 1979 at the RFH.
The cancellation due to illness was announced a couple of days before, but when the substitute conductor was announced, the rush for all remaining tickets was of Avalanche proportions.
The substitute - Sergiu Celibidache!
what a concert.

By coincidence, I've just been catching up on my Hi-Fi News from a couple of months ago where there's an article on Beethoven's 'Pastoral' symphony. The writer quotes Celi as saying, in a French radio interview, 'he has no music in him'.

Pretty harsh.

[Petrushka]

Can't beat slarty's example but mine would be at a performance of Die Meistersinger I attended at Covent Garden. Gösta Winberg cried off after Act 2. The replacement Walter von Stolzing in Act 3? Ben Heppner.

Also, Eugen Jochum cancelled a Bruckner 8 with the LPO I attended in 1980. He was replaced by Klaus Tennstedt.

[Beef Oven!]

Can't beat slarty's example but mine would be at a performance of Die Meistersinger I attended at Covent Garden. Gösta Winberg cried off after Act 2. The replacement Walter von Stolzing in Act 3? Ben Heppner.

Also, Eugen Jochum cancelled a Bruckner 8 with the LPO I attended in 1980. He was replaced by Klaus Tennstedt.

Abbado cancelled on me for a BPO Bruckner 7 and was replaced by the superior (in this work, IMV) Haitink.

[Pabmusic]

There must be many many different experiences amongst us all.
I will begin with Karl Böhm. He was due to conduct a Brahms first and third in May 1979 at the RFH.
The cancellation due to illness was announced a couple of days before, but when the substitute conductor was announced, the rush for all remaining tickets was of Avalanche proportions.
The substitute - Sergiu Celibidache!
what a concert.

I was at that one! A friend with me was so put out that Bohm didn't appear!

[makropulos]

There must be many many different experiences amongst us all.
I will begin with Karl Böhm. He was due to conduct a Brahms first and third in May 1979 at the RFH.
The cancellation due to illness was announced a couple of days before, but when the substitute conductor was announced, the rush for all remaining tickets was of Avalanche proportions.
The substitute - Sergiu Celibidache!
what a concert.

9 June 1981 - an ailing Karl Böhm replaced by Carlos Kleiber for a concert with the LSO.
CK's only appearance with the orchestra (apparently due to hostile reviews in the papers).

[Richard Tarleton]

The only time I saw Fonteyn and Nureyev, in Sleeping Beauty, an ROH flunkey came on stage just before curtain up. There was a horrified gasp in the house. His first words were to say that Fonteyn and Nureyev would be dancing. Cue wild applause. He went on to announce some minor cast change.

But otherwise - lots, inc. many in the opera house. I suppose Charles Groves for Otto Klemperer in Bruckner 7 at the RFH (1972) was the most disappointing simply because that was about the last chance ever to see Klemperer.

[slarty]

One of the strangest substitutions in my experience - I travelled to Duisburg to see a performance of Die Meistersinger in 1977 particularly for Ridderbusch as Sachs.
On arrival, I was astounded to learn that the opera had been changed to Lohengrin that morning because Ridderbusch was so tired from all his jetting around. He demanded that they change the work or he would cancel. Everyone in the cast agreed to switch roles ( The Deutsche Oper am Rhein had two companies - Düsseldorf & Duisburg and could easily do this) and so Lohengrin was performed instead.
I had bad luck getting to see Ridderbusch as Sachs around this time, but after organizing a group friends with tickets for Meistersinger in Munich in October 1979 to see Fischer-Dieskau as Sachs we arrived to find that Fi-Di had withdrawn from the role and his replacement was Ridderbusch. It was a tremendous performance, by the way, wondefully conducted by Sawallisch.

[jean]

I saw Juan Diego Florez at his official stage debut in Matilde di Shabran at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro In 1996.

At the age of 23, he stepped in to take the leading tenor role in Matilde di Shabran when Bruce Ford became ill.

[Conchis]

In 1999, I watched a visibly terrified Rita Cullis replacing the suddenly indisposed Cheryl Studer for a performance of the finale from Strauss's Capriccio. This was at the RFH.

Word around the hall was that Studer (whose career ended around this time) had appeared at the dress rehearsal in such a state of vocal disarray that she'd promptly cancelled and hopped onto her plane home. Cullis had been called in not so much as a last minute, as last second replacement. 'She's the lady in the bath', one audience member sneeringly (and ungenerously) commented.

Being even less of a vocal connoisseur then than I am now, I could hear nothing wrong with Culis's performance but the lady herself was clearly not happy and felt unprepared. She winced at some of the sounds she produced. It all made for uncomfortable, if fascinating, viewing.

I couldn't understand why the programme wasn't changed: it was in the 'concerto' portion, though I can't remember what the overture or main items were.

Afaia, hardly anything has been heard of Cullis (or Studer) since.....

[pastoralguy]

Around 1978, the (R)SNO went through a period of violin soloists cancelling on them including the late Ralph Holmes, Oskar Shumsky and Wanda Wilkomirska. Their replacement? A young chap called Nigel Kennedy!

It was very obvious that here was a special talent.

[Richard Tarleton]

Great singers of the 1970s I missed - I was due to see Helga Dernesch as Elizabeth in Don Carlo (ROH 1972) but she cancelled, to be replaced by, er, Joyce Barker. Likewise René Kollo in Das Lied at RFH was replaced at the last minute by Robert Tear...much as I liked Robert Tear in the right repertoire, he seemed seriously underpowered for this.

And a very odd one - Marta Argerich due to play Beethoven 3, replaced by Kyung-Wha Chung, playing Brahms

[LHC]

Ones I remember are:

The first night of a new Parsifal at ENO conducted by Goodall. Warren Ellsworth was ill and withdrew, to be replaced by Siegfried Jerusalem, making his UK opera debut.

La Boheme at the ROH, the Korean tenor (whose name escapes me) singing Rodolfo withdrew and was replaced by a pre-vocal difficulties Rolando Villazon who sang gloriously. Villazon was at the Opera House to sing the Duca in Rigoletto and became the first person since Caruso to sing both the Duca and Rodolfo at the Opera House in the space of 3 days.

Most recently at the Wiener Staatsoper, Javier Camarena was due to sing Lindoro in L'Italiana in Algeri, but withdrew from all performances. The night we were there his replacement was Juan Diego Florez.

[Barbirollians]

Another Kyung Wha Chung one - when she replaced Midori in the Mendelssohn at a concert in the late 1980s a definite plus .

Friends of mine also recalled going to the ROH and finding to their delight some rather unknown but highly rated young baritone who has since disappeared being replaced by Thomas Allen in Don Giovanni .