Lucia di Lammermoor at ROH

[David-G]

I idly turned on R3 in the car earlier and was pleased to find Lucia being broadcast. At the end of the aria there was applause and I said to myself - must be from the Met - these Americans! I was amazed to discover later it was from Covent Garden. Is this practice commonplace in Britain now?: to be quite candid it makes me cringe. I was viewing Schubert's string quintet on YouTube recently and the audience applauded at the end of the slow movement - is there nothing sacred anymore? Perhaps I am old-fashioned but the concert-going public seems insensitive.

I have been going to the opera at Covent Garden for over 40 years, and it has always been the practice to applaud arias in Italian opera (if they are well sung, of course). This is surely part of the Italian operatic tradition. The arias and cabalettas were designed for applause. This does not of course happen in Wagner or Strauss.

[gurnemanz]

Strange that it is OK practice to applaud "big" arias in operas but not separate movements in symphonies or chamber works.

[David-G]

Thanks for the recommendation, IGI!

Re the broadcast this evening, I am mystified how the running water that had ruined Edgardo's final aria for me was completely inaudible. Given that up in the Amphi, across the whole width of the auditorium, that wretched water could be heard quite loudly, how can the microphones not have picked it up? Or did they keep the tap turned off for the broadcast?

[jean]

I have been going to the opera at Covent Garden for over 40 years, and it has always been the practice to applaud arias in Italian opera (if they are well sung, of course). This is surely part of the Italian operatic tradition...

I think so; I don't believe it's particularly American.

What possibly is American practice is what I heard at a recent Met relay - the audience clapped a singer the moment they appeared on stage, before they'd sung a note.

(Would it be a good idea to combine this thread with the other one on this production?)

[jean]

I think they'd sorted that problem of the running water by the time of the relay - see my post #49 above.

I understood from the broadcast copmmentary that the second ghost was Lucia's mother. Still too corporeal and clunky.

[Richard Tarleton]

Welcome anbonnabui!

Yes I think it's always happened at Covent Garden in Italian, certainly in bel canto, repertoire - Joan Sutherland's first Lucia mad scene brought the house down in 1959. I've long since given up on opera from the Met, coming to the conclusion both that there was far more applause and that the audience there clapped everything regardless of merit.

But applause in the Schubert - that's another matter altogether, how appalling.

And yes jean good idea, first try for my merging skills, I'll probably have to ask Caliban to clear up the mess

[jean]

Perhaps tweak the thread title a bit, as we've known for ages who it was?

[Flosshilde]

I've long since given up on opera from the Met, coming to the conclusion both that there was far more applause and that the audience there clapped everything regardless of merit.

They even applaud the set when the curtain goes up.

[jean]

They even applaud the set when the curtain goes up.

Actually, they do that at the National Theatre.

The only time I've heard an aria repeated because of the ferocity of the applause was in Rigoletto at the Fenice - and the chorus Va pensiero was repeated at the Arena in Verona - both in Italy.

(And now this thread, merged at my suggestion, is hardly about Lucia at all!)

[DracoM]

Worse [IMO] was in audience at Parsifal in Bayreuth and a whole phalanx of Americans in a block applauded at the end of Act 1.
Needless to say, they only did it once that evening given the outraged reception of angry shushing they got.

[french frank]

They even applaud the set when the curtain goes up.

They used to do that in our village WI productions too.

[PhilipT]

Didn't Mad King Ludwig once encore a Wagner overture?

It's common at popular music gigs, where the playlist is usually not announced in advance, for the audience to applaud the beginning of a favoured number. As near as I can tell, this how they express their appreciation that the band have deigned to include it in the set at all.

Compared with such behaviour, applauding the scenery when the curtain goes up and the conclusion of an aria seem pretty tame.

[underthecountertenor]

Worse [IMO] was in audience at Parsifal in Bayreuth and a whole phalanx of Americans in a block applauded at the end of Act 1.
Needless to say, they only did it once that evening given the outraged reception of angry shushing they got.

I'm rather confused by this. Why is it worse? I was ignorant of the Bayreuth tradition until your post caused me to look it up (for which many thanks). But that revealed to me that the tradition is itself based on a misunderstanding of Wagner's own wishes (and, amusingly, that he was himself the object of an 'outraged reception of angry shushing' when, in true Met style, he shouted 'bravo' as the Flowermaidens exited in Act II. As for the Americans, if no one told them in advance, how were they supposed to know? I supposed that, given that they were a phalanx in a block, it might perhaps have been expected that there was someone among them who was aware of the tradition and could have alerted them, but who knows?

In fact your anecdote brings out a point about the annual tussle between the inter-movement applauders and shushers at the Proms. If I were a first-timer at a symphony concert, I might well think as I would have done as a uneducated first-timer at Parsifal at Bayreuth - that this is an obvious place at which to applaud. Can I be blamed for that? I know that the answer is that, if I'm new, I should hold back and see what the regulars do; but, in the case of Parsifal at least, if I'm used to applause at the end of each act of an opera, Parsifal included, and I'm surrounded by people in a similar position, is it so terribly wrong if I join them in doing what I (and opera-goers worldwide, except in Bayreuth at the end of Act I of Parsifal) invariably do?

Also: you say they only did it once that evening, but in normal circumstances Act I of Parsifal is only performed once in an evening. Were the Bayreuthers so horrified at the desecration that they felt the need to run the whole Act again?

[Prommer]

The only place that the silence is fully observed at the close of Act I of Parsifal is in Vienna, in my experience.

In Bayreuth, I saw the stunning Herheim production three times, and each time there was a small respectful silence, then a (quickly) shushed outbreak of applause, then everyone goes for a sausage.

As to the whys and wherefores, it is a reflection of the tradition which developed after Wagner's death, really under Cosima, during the period when it could not be performed outside Bayreuth, and in some circles to reflect the 'sacred' nature of the 'communion rites' (uncovering of the Grail) onstage.

[Flosshilde]

Also: you say they only did it once that evening, but in normal circumstances Act I of Parsifal is only performed once in an evening. Were the Bayreuthers so horrified at the desecration that they felt the need to run the whole Act again?

Ohhh, wouldn't that be blissful?