To boo or not to boo at the opera? The Royal Opera House would rather audiences did not but its music director, Sir Antonio Pappano, believes there is an exception.
Booing at British opera houses is increasingly common and last week the Guardian’s classical and opera critic identified another trend: booing the villain.
“Opera audiences, it would seem, are developing a habit of booing reprehensible on-stage characters,” Tim Ashley wrote, disapprovingly, in his five-star review of the Royal Opera’s Madama Butterfly.
“When Marcelo Puente, cast as Pinkerton … took his curtain call, he was greeted with the kind of noise usually accorded a pantomime villain. This was despite giving one of the most complete and convincing portrayals of the role to be heard for some time.”
Pappano said on Wednesday he was OK with this sort of booing: “He [Pinkerton] is a terrible cad, isn’t he? You should have heard it at the schools matinee. Pantomime booing is kind of fun.”
He admitted to being less enamoured with the other sort of booing, which has crept over from Europe.
“The other type of booing, when something is disliked … no artist likes it, there is no question. But theatre is alive, people express themselves,” Pappano said.
“I think there are other ways to express yourself – don’t clap. I don’t like booing. If you ask me personally, I hate it – it’s hurtful.”
Booing at new productions, including Lucia di Lammermoor, William Tell and Idomeneo became a more frequent occurrence at Covent Garden in central London under the reign of Kasper Holten, who has returned to his native Denmark.
His successor, Oliver Mears, one month in his new job as director of opera at the Royal Opera House, admitted he was unused to booing when artistic director of Northern Ireland Opera.
“We didn’t get any booing at all,” he said. “It is not something I would do because, no matter what you have seen on stage, 99.9% of the time the performers have absolutely given it their all and they are deserving of respect and appreciation.
“Other people are entitled to their own way of doing things and their own opinions, of course, so I would never say ‘you can’t boo’, but personally it is never something I would do.”
Mears and Pappano were launching the company’s 2017-18 season, during which they hoped no one would feel moved to boo. “I want all the productions we put on here to be really loved by audiences,” Mears said.
Pappano says there is no place like an opera house when the audience explodes with pleasure, although that is more common abroad because many attendees in London are keen to get home.
“I have a theory about this. British audiences … a lot of people have to travel long distances when they leave the opera house. It is not like Vienna, where it is a small area and the applause went on for half an hour. This would never happen in this place … it is short and very intense here.”
Mears’ first season will have six new productions at Covent Garden, including Katie Mitchell directing the world premiere of George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence and a new La Bohème from Richard Jones.
The company also announced four premieres outside the Royal Opera House as it continues building work. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera Coraline will be at the Barbican; The Return of Ulysses at the Roundhouse; Mamzer Bastard by Na’ama Zisser gets its world premiere at the Hackney Empire and a new work by Tansy Davies will be performed at a former print works in Surrey Quays, south-east London.
The Royal Ballet also announced its 2017-18 season. It will include a collaborative celebration of the choreographer Kenneth MacMillan to mark the 25th anniversary of his death bringing, for the first time, the Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Northern Ballet and Scottish Ballet on to the Covent Garden stage for the first time.
Other highlights are a production of Swan Lake by Liam Scarlett, a celebration of Leonard Bernstein and ballets by Twyla Tharp and Arthur Pita.
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