"It's a performance, not a recital!"

This is an item I considered for the Friday Miscellanea but decided it was too trivial. After reading Ann Althouse's post, perhaps I was wrong: "Excuse me. It’s a performance; it’s not a recital. Respect the audience. Respect me." The post refers to a piece in the New York Times about an incident during a performance of Tosca.

It was the third act of Puccini’s “Tosca” at a theater in Seoul, and the South Korean tenor Alfred Kim, responding to enthusiastic applause, was singing a rare encore of “E lucevan le stelle,” one of the opera’s most beloved arias.

Then the unexpected happened: The celebrated soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who was singing the title role in a performance on Sunday, stormed onstage and demanded that he stop, according to local media reports and accounts by audience members.

“Excuse me,” she said, signaling to the orchestra to pause.

When the orchestra continued playing, she also refused to stop. “It’s a performance; it’s not a recital,” Gheorghiu said. “Respect the audience. Respect me.”

Althouse comments:

She's right about encores. They interfere with the immersion in the theatrical narrative. But so do breaking character and storming off. Both are pretty amusing though, I would think. But how can the audience reengage with a love story between Cavaradossi and Tosca when Kim and Gheorghiu are in hot conflict? I don't know. Maybe that's amusing too.

What do you say — encores or no encores? At least it's obvious that there should be agreement on the subject before the performance starts... unless this whole thing is a publicity stunt. It got me interested in Gheorghiu. Was that the point?

It is an interesting question. In the 18th and 19th century encores were very common during opera performances. But today they mostly are found in solo recitals with an occasional one in orchestral performances especially when there is a concerto soloist. One interesting aspect of opera commentary is the related question, do the characters in opera realize they are singing? Some critics think that, for dramatic reasons, they do not. In other words, if the performer repeats an aria as an encore, they in some way break character as the fact that this is singing and not just talking is suddenly to the fore. Well, and of course Gheorghiu radically broke character by storming onstage and asking the orchestra to stop playing.

One commentator at Althouse says:

Encores and standing ovations have long since been out of control.

Which is not true, of course. Encores in many places, especially other than major concert halls, have been diminishing steadily over the years. In the 70s I can recall attending concerts with eight encores (Andrés Segovia) and seven encores (Nigel Rogers), but nowadays the only artist in that league is Grigory Sokolov. Other than him, we see great recitals followed by one, or perhaps two encores. This is the opposite of being out of control.