Funniest thing you've done at the opera?

[Rabrrrrrr]

Inspired by the most unchristian thing in church thread.

A number of years ago, perhaps 1991, a friend and I went to see La Traviata performed in Madison, WI. The opera house there is very small - maybe 200 people tops, so it's very small. The main character in la Traviata is named Alfredo, and the oepra featueres his father. At the end of the second act, Alfredo and his father have a big argument, and Alfredo storms off stage, and that's the end of the act, with this very sacchrainey typcially Verdi "sad" melody/thing going on with the orchestra. So, as Alfredo storms away and the curtain was closing, I leaned over to my friend and whispered, "Wait, before you leave, would you like some Fettucini, Alfredo?" My friend laughed SO loud, the whole audience glared at him.

[Syrinx]

1. who the hell has been to the opera?

:shrug:

:)

[SOteric]

2. Lot's of folks.

Me for instance.

I'm just not coming up with anything funny about it.

There was a real knee-slapper of an incident at the symphony one year, but nothing's coming back to me about the opera.

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. Well, hell, then maybe opera was too specifiic! Add the symphony tale!

It's Friday night, I have a couple martoonis in my, and GOPisEvil is loaded to the gills, so fire away!

[BlackVelvetElvis]

14. No funny stories to share

But I saw my first opera this past weekend, Donizetti's Lucia (I'm a novice who has recently discovered how great opera is) BTW, the house was packed on a Sunday afternoon and got to see a cast that actually caught fire, it was dynamite!

[Cheswick2.0]

19. me, many times

on stage and off. You should try it.

[wickerwoman]

3. Maybe you had to be there, but my funniest was:

I went to a performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Seattle Opera where they strictly enforce the "no entrance after the act begins" rule. We were stuck in traffic and arrived about two minutes after the show began. They had closed circuit TV in the bar though so we got screaming drunk and gave out god awful pirate "Yaarrrghh"s during the whole first act (which takes place on a ship.)

We got in later but we were still a little gone and I ended up falling asleep during this exquisitely designed part in the middle where Tristan and Isolde meet in the woods- the whole set behind them melted away so it was just the two of them floating in a background of stars. It was great, but not the kind of thing to keep you awake when you're drunk and two hours into an opera. I was snoring too until my neighbor elbowed me in the ribs. It was embarrasing because I love opera and the performance was great .

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. Wow - I think at that point,

I would have just stayed at the bar for the rest of the show, knowing that one cannot watch Wagner (at least I couldn't) with alcohol in the system.

Reminds of a situation I had in 2000 - my partner and I had been stending throgh the entire Ring Cycle at the Met (it was my second Ring Cycle standing, her first). Anyway, I managed to stand for the entire *#$&^% thing, except that during Gotterdammerung, at about hour 5.5, I had to go to the bathroom so bad, I couoldn't manage it anymore, nad had to leave. So I went to the bathroom, and was forced to watch the last half hour in the waiting room on closer circuit TV.

Not the humorous situation you had, but bloody annoying. At the Met, the death of the God and the fall of Valhalla is f-ing amazing, and I couldn't be there in person to watch it. Had to watch it on a small TV. DAMN DAMN DAMN! Yes, I had seen it before, but still . . . when one dedicates 20 hours to an opera cycle, one should get to watch the last half hour in person, you know?

[DivinBreuvage]

6. Once during a performance of "Don Juan Triumphant"

I hanged the male lead and kidnapped the soprano, dragging her off to my underground hideout in the sewers beneath the Paris Opera House.

Good times, good times.

Françoise

[The Zanti Regent]

7. Funniest thing someone else ever did at the opera

My office mail clerk's dad worked at the Met in New York. One time Franklin was "drafted" to be an extra in a Met production. He didn't want to do it, while he was on the stage during a televised production, he kept picking his nose. Needless to say, his career as a thespian self-destructed!

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. That's great! And it reminds me of another story

Friend of mine was in the chorus for an opera at the Met, don't remember which, but Pavarotti was the lead that night, and it was being televised live, and my friend was part of a chorus of 6 or 7 sword-wielding guys who also had capes.

Well, in one scene, all the guys in capes were fighting as was Pavaroti. The scene directions were that pavarotti gets stabbed and falls down, and all the cloak and sword wielding guys end up leaving the stage.

Well, this was performed at a time when pavarotti was at about his fattest, and when he fell down in the fight, he fell down on my friend's cloak. My friend could not free himself, try as he might and as he did, and pavarotti could not move enough to let my friend get free. In the next scene, which is a long aria by the character Pavaroti was playing about death and dying - which was being televised live, mind you, and which should be just that character on stage - my friend had to lie there and not move, as though he had been killed, while the fat man sang his aria.

I love that story!

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. I smoked a joint in front of The Grand Ole Opera once.

I was a dirt-poor draftee in the Army during Vietnam. The bus I was on going from Louisville to Atlanta broke down in Nashville, so me and a couple of my Army buddies checked out the sites close to the terminal. One was a little red brick building called The Grand Ole Opera. Being from Alabama, I knew the scoop on the old place. However, my two buddies from South Florida via Michigan didn't know squat. I convinced 'em it was one of them thare hi faluten'places that you rich folk visit to hear people sing in languages you don't understand so you can impress your rich republican friends at the yuppy country club when you play golf on their fancy cow pasture.

Anyway, we shared a left-handed smoke in front of the ole' place and moved on. Only took 18 hours to get from Louisville to Atlanta. That was the last time I road a freaking bus. From then on, if I couldn't afford air fare to get home, I stayed at the freaking Army base!

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. So what happened while being high at the grand ole oprey?

[Elwood P Dowd]

16. We were told to move on by a cop.

He just shook his head like we were some kind of scum. It could have been worse. At Friendship Airport in Baltimore a lady came up to me and requested I leave the waiting area. She didn't want a baby killer near her children. I was just a draftee making $100.00 a month trying to survie two years of captivity in the US Army and had never even been to Nam. Go figure.

[Rabrrrrrr]

17. My God - how awfully rude!

"I don't want a baby killer near my child". What a bitch.

[Maple]

9. I tend to

hum along with it...off-key I gather.

Actually, I've been told it's distinctly UNfunny. :shrug:

[DivinBreuvage]

11. This one ALWAYS brings down the house

Don Giovanni, Scene V: the orchestra is running through a few tunes as the Don is at table. When they get to the third, Leporello comments "Questa poi la conosco pur troppo," and I loudly demand, "who the hell wrote that piece of crap?"

Gets 'em every time!

Françoise

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. LOL!

Truly!

[ironflange]

15. Here's mine

I was a super (extra) in a local production of Aida in 1977. (An aside: James Lucas was the director, what a riot that guy was) My role was to carry spears around, wearing several different embarrassing costumes. The guy playing Radames was a real prankster, though he didn't pull anything on the supers. At least, not until the final act of the final performance.

In his final scene with Amneris, Radames was brought on to the stage by four soldiers, two in front and two behind (I was one of the front ones). We would go about a third of the way across the stage, stop, do an about-face, and then march back to the wings, leaving Radames alone with the fat lady. We got pretty good at that part, coming on in a nice formation. Once the big duet was finished, we four came back on stage, sort of grabbed him, then had to climb a long set of stairs at the back of the stage and off. It was a long way to go, and the band usually ended its bit before we were even half-way up, and Radames always told us to hurry up, because the next scene couldn't start until we were gone.

On the last night the stage manager said, "GO!" as usual, and the two of us in front strutted out snappy as always. We stopped, spun around, and saw that we were alone on stage. Radames and the other two soldiers were still standing offstage, and I will never forget the look of utter horror on the face of one of the other soldiers. Well, after a few seconds of my wondering what the hell to do now, Radames nonchalantly strolled out on stage, so my colleague and I scurried back to the wings. During the duet, we tried to decide how to get even with him, and decided we'd rough him up more than usual, then really drag our heels up those stairs. The time came, and we ran out, pushed him around quite a bit, then headed very slowly for the stairs. The orchestra finished its passage before we even reached the stairs, so the audience had to watch us plod up the stairs in silence save for the stomping of our sandals on the steps. We had finally gotten close to the top, when we heard Radames hiss, "SLOWER!" I'd have run him through with my spear on the spot, but thought better since there were 2500 witnesses on hand.

[Rabrrrrrr]

18. A very Robert Wilson moment!

Way to get the guy who played Radames!