Should audiences lay off the boos?

 

To boo or not to boo?

At the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion three weeks ago, there were loud cheers for tenor Plácido Domingo and conductor James Conlon during the curtain calls for the premiere of Los Angeles Opera’s new production of Wagner’s “Die Walküre.” But amid continued thunderous applause, a couple of jeers also greeted the fanciful director, Achim Freyer, when he came on stage to take a bow. Now, the booers have moved on to the blogosphere, bragging that their booing is a badge of honor.

Terry Teachout, the Wall Street Journal’s theater critic, argued in a recent column that booing is preferable to audience indifference or the automatic Broadway standing ovation. The excellent daily New York radio show “Soundcheck” also devoted a recent program to the many pros and few cons of booing.

Booing provocative opera directors has been common practice in Europe for some time and is obviously not unheard of in the U.S. New Yorkers booed director Mary Zimmerman (fairly mildly I thought) last month at the Metropolitan Opera for her updated production of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula.” For the most part, though, American theatergoers have tended to be more polite (or insecure) and more easily impressed than European audiences.

But that could be changing. Etiquette is not, these days, a growth industry. The Internet is inundated with bile in the name of free expression. Television reality shows encourage a thumbs-up, thumbs-down mentality. The allure of instantaneous reaction makes Twitter the talk of the town. Meanwhile, the economic meltdown is melting down manners: More than ever, people who pay good money to see a show feel they have every right to express righteous anger.

Art isn’t easy, but booing is. A mind-closing activity, it tends to be the expression of rigidity in the face of invention. Artists are almost never booed for incompetence (no one can deny the craft of Freyer’s stagecraft). They are booed for intent and out of partisanship. I don’t necessarily advocate acclaim for nothing more than mindless effort, but in a lifetime of attending the performing arts, I have encountered an insignificant number of truly insincere artists.

Not everything works, but at least in the noncommercial realm of the concert stage and the opera house, I credit nearly everyone with trying to say something. And when they actually manage to, the meaning may not immediately sink in.

A dozen years ago, I remember the opening-night production of “The Magic Flute” at the Salzburg Festival directed by Freyer. He transformed Mozart’s hallowed opera into a transcendental circus, and dressed the characters as clowns. A stern audience of Mozart worshipers seethed in anger. The atmosphere in the hall was so toxic that I feared the crowd would turn into a formally dressed lynch mob when Freyer took his bow.

Yet within two years, this production had become so popular that the festival needed to find a special space for it so it could be brought back annually. It became an Austrian tourist attraction. The gift shop was full of Freyer “Flute” souvenirs. After a little while, Mozart lovers forgot their preconceptions and began to understand that the production was a loving new look at the “Flute,” not a desecration. The best art serves to reveal something you might not have noticed before.

Last Sunday, members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic surrounded Esa-Pekka Salonen and, one after another, hugged him. Musicians and their outgoing music director had tears in their eyes. The ovation from the audience in Walt Disney Concert Hall lasted exactly 16 minutes (I timed it) and would have gone on a lot longer had Salonen not, with a hop, skip and jump, finally pulled his colleagues off stage.

The concert itself was a Peter Sellars staging of Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio “Oedipus Rex” and “Symphony of Psalms.” Sellars, who has had more than his share of boos over the years, did something far more radical to Stravinsky than Freyer has been  doing to Wagner across the street. Sellars actually changed the text of “Oedipus,” removing Cocteau’s narrations and adding his own personal selection from Sophocles. He even added a narrative to the “Symphony of Psalms,” making it a ritual burial for Oedipus, which has raised not a few critical eyebrows.

What would Stravinsky have thought? By a strange coincidence, I happened to sing in the chorus of performances of these two works with the old man in the audience. The occasion was the opening of Zellerbach Hall in 1968 at UC Berkeley. Stravinsky had been invited to conduct. I was a first-year music student and, as a performance requirement, had joined the University Chorus.

The 85-year-old composer was ultimately too weak to conduct. He attended, but the musician closest to him, Robert Craft, filled in on the podium. University officials gave us little access to rehearse in the new hall, nor did we get much time with Craft. Too late we learned that Zellerbach’s acoustics were poor. We couldn’t hear ourselves to find our cues, and Craft, conducting with his head buried in the score, was not much help. I can only imagine what it sounded like to Stravinsky, whom we could see in the audience mechanically smiling.

The music was presented without context or much of anything. Notes were notes and no more. I don’t remember our ever paying attention to what the Latin text meant, although we memorized it. The applause from a gala audience was nothing special but Stravinsky got a dutiful standing ovation. 

If that occasion was an example of period practice (Stravinsky did choose the conditions even if the results may not have been as he would have liked), then Sellars’ production should have been, in comparison, sheer travesty. But tell that to the Disney audience. Tell that to Salonen, who, after conducting unforgettably brilliant performances in a hall where every sound is a visceral experience, walked off stage with his arm around Sellars. In fact, Sellars produced  an atmosphere of such radiant Stravinskyan revelation that he wound up giving the orchestra and audience permission to express their own love.

Salonen, don’t forget, wasn’t welcomed with such open arms to the Los Angeles Philharmonic 17 years ago. His programming of modern music infuriated longtime L.A. Philharmonic subscribers who wanted comforting classics cushioned in a warm blanket of soothing sound.

When I arrived at The Times, 13 years ago, I got an earful from orchestra players who were fed up with their frigid Finnish maestro taking all the bloom out of Beethoven and Bruckner, to say nothing of his icy Tchaikovsky. Plus it seemed as though the whole city was opposed to the building of an unconventional concert hall considered downright perverse.

Those attitudes didn’t change overnight. Mature relationships need time, and they need goodwill. In the end, Los Angeles artists, administrators and audiences learned to care about one another, and Salonen won our trust and our love.

Boos stop discussion. But a symphony orchestra hug like last Sunday’s amazing display in Disney can be heard around the world.

-- Mark Swed

Illustration by Jason Greenberg. Photo of Esa-Pekka Salonen by Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times.

Comments

[tom]

here's what i say to your article:

BOOOOOOOOOOOO!

just kidding. :-)
great job, a good point well articulated.

[jpermo]

Mark Swed when have you ever brought up Salonen's complete negligence of music from the Americas? Yes, we got many years of great concerts of mostly European music and he brought the quality of the orchestra up to a much higher standard. Can you imagine, however, a situation where an American musical director goes to Helsinki and conducts almost no Northern European music? Sure we get Adams, his stature on the West Coast is too big to ignore and yes, of course, EP has to do Stucky, that's a typical institutional commitment. A bit of Revueltas, perhaps? I challenge you to make a tally of the LA Phil's programs for the last 15 years and approximate the rehearsal resources used. This is not a parochial exercise - the man does not like American music, in general, and our local musical culture has suffered for it all the time we've been attending terrific concerts of European music in our shiny new hall. Shame on you for not bringing this up.

[E]

“Boos stop discussion” so completely, that their use warrants a discussion in the LA Times.

Nothing cuts through complaisant uncritical praise like a well timed boo. Voicing a minority opinion is anything but easy, rigid, or mind-closing.

[GeraldR5]

Boos are a waste of time an energy and generally very bad manners (in my humble opinion). I have yet to see booing improve a performance, nor cut the performer's paycheck.

[JF]

The LA Opera's Ring Cycle deserves booing. Friends took me to Das Rheingold and apologized! I'm not the booing type, but it was the worst production I've ever seen, no fault of James Conlon or Wagner. Maybe people boo because LA Opera may sink because of this production and we like opera. Already we get only a few next year and two of them are this drek. THAT deserves booing.

[ikso]

jperno: Swed's on the Phil payroll, not the Times. He has not criticized anything Salonen has done and won't. A real critic might look at the progression of Salonen stepping down to compose, then taking another MD slot, then reneging on his leaving town to come back after a year as Great Leader for Life and ask what's up. The Phil has to think two to five years ahead and what does this mean regarding the duration of the Dudamel administration.

Instead we get yet another piece about the dreamy E-PS that Everyone. Must. Love.

At least the Pulitzer committee didn't reward this legacy of tripe.

[Michael]

Why not just bring things to throw if you don't like a performance? Perhaps the conductor or musicians could be waylaid and assaulted on the way to their cars. A few sharp blows to a cherished instrument would teach them to displease the paying customers. With a little work even opera buffs might resemble the ice hockey crowd.

[Tom]

More to the point regarding the LA Opera is the execrable way in which the house is managed. After having worked hard to arrive on time for Rheingold, taking bus and subway, I was very angry to have hoards of people admitted after the first scene, interrupting what should have been a seamless continuous performance. I will not return for the last two subscription operas I have paid for, and will give up on live performance in LA and content myself with recordings. Boo Placido!

[E]

Yes Michael, booing is the same thing as assault. There is no distinction.

[megan]

Concert halls are one of the last bastions of good manners and a supposedly more-refined crowd. Express your disapproval by refusing to clap, but booing is boorish. Save the boos for rowdy sporting events.

[ikso]

Whoa. The musicians and their instruments are sacred. Work over the real perps and their enablers.

[bullwinkle]

I believe our culture tilts much too far toward the active expression of anger and disapproval. Lack of enthusiasm can be expressed quite clearly through a lack of expression: by tepid applause, for example. And in general, I might add, disapproving silence often carries a much bigger punch than a handful of boos from a few arrogant, attention-seeking buffoons.

[Greg Mulzet]

Boos are fantastic- love (cheers) and hate (boos) are not opposites- you can't hate something you don't care about. The opposite of love is indifference (polite applause). I long for the time when the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring led to riots. That was a time when the world cared about art, not American Idol and Brittany Spears. If people want to boo, LET THEM BOO!

[Bonnie Russell]

When necessary I prefer what others are doing. Hissing.
It's less intrusive, yet conveys the feeling.

If one must display their feelings, a group hiss is nicer.

[Calvin]

Freyer's Rheingold and Walkuere had some interesting ideas, such as employing pantomime to act out the long narrative monologues. But Freyer does not accept the story of the Ring on Wagner's terms. Freyer's essay published in the Rheingold program includes a number of critical inaccuracies as far as the plot is concerned. For example he calls Siegfried "the first human" thus ignoring Hunding and the characters in Siegmund's and Sieglinde's first act narrations. He gives Mime, not the love-renouncing Alberich, credit for forging the ring. The passionless Walkuere act one duet was a travesty. Freyer seems less concerned with Wagner's conception, and more determined to advance his own aesthetic and ideological notions. Every Ring production gives the hearer food for thought, but this one left me with intellectual indigestion.

[aprilann]

Two words come to mind: Rome, falling.

[JM]

I find the present LA Ring to be an absolute bore. Let's walk around in circles with a light stick: how profound.

[Silverlakejim]

I am all for booing and wish there was more of it. If I am allowed to voice my approval, it only makes sense that I should be allowed to voice my disapproval.

When I go to a event and really love a performance I want to express my appreciation. I yell bravo.I applaud vigorously. I make as much noise as I can to show the artist onstage my appreciation and give them encouragement.

Why then must I refrain from voicing my deep dissatisfaction with a performer or a director? Not applauding a profoundly awful performance is a cop out, it does not convey any message at all to the performer. A vociferous boo definitely sends a performer or a director my feelings of intense dissatisfaction with his or her performance.

I have never booed a director (I actually love Fryer's Ring, but support people who hate it and boo him), but I have booed performers who have given truly ghastly performances. I want to show my disapproval. I want them to know that I have paid good money to watch them perform and they have grossly disappointed my expectations and should not have been on the stage that evening.

I am a school teacher. It would seem that by Mr Swed's logic I should just give passing grades to all my students and ignore or keep silent about below standard mastery of the subject matter at hand. To refute Mr. Swed, when I give a child who is performing below standard a failing grade, that act actually elicits a dialogue in the home and often leads to improvement in the child's performance. In my field honest appraisals of failure actual start a discussion. Why can't this also be true as well in the performing arts? Doesn't this article on booing, and its many online responses, prove that actively voicing displeasure can actually start a discussion?

[K Weill]

Booing in an opera house is totally legitimate. Opera is all about emotions - so nothing could be worse for a director than just tepid polite applause. For most European directors, booing is like a badge of honor. However, it is getting awfully tough to shock audiences nowadays. Obviously - it is somewhat easier in Los Angeles...
As Mark Swed correctly points out, in many cases, within a few years audiences change their perception of a production completely. Wieland Wagner was greeted with incredible hostility during his first few years in Bayreuth. When he died, his style of Wagner productions had become a hallmark for contemporary Wagner interpretations. Goetz Friedrich's "Tannhaeuser" in Bayreuth was greeted with bomb threats and performances had to be guarded by police. Wagner Societies all over Europe threatened to boycott Patrice Chereau's 1976 Centennial Ring. Within a few years, that very same Chereau Ring became a classic. So, I believe, there is hope for Freyer's visionary Ring production in L.A. (I still don't like his Salzburg "Zauberfloete" though, which I consider one of his least inspired stage works).

[Douglas Botnick]

The person commenting on Mr. Solonen's record of performing American and local composers is making a very serious point. Serge Koussevitzky, with all his pros and cons as on the podium itself, should be best remembered as the 20th century's finest advocate for new music on an international scale and particularly of American music. That said, I must say that my memories of Mr. Solonen are of one of the finest and most exciting and probing intellects I believe I will ever encounter at the helm of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. On balance he has been an extraordinarily positive force for great music making in Los Angeles. Jascha Heifetz, too, was often mistakenly labeled cold or cool. Mr. Solonen's passion may have blazed like the northern lights. As the great violinist, Ivry Gitles once commented, "Is music so poor that it can be done only one way?" To paraphrase, "Is there only one way to passion?"