Ballet performance derailed by stink bomb
GOTHENBURG, Sweden, Sept. 27 (UPI) — A Gothenburg Ballet performance for 850 Swedish school students was canceled after someone threw stink bombs into the orchestra pit.
Read here.
We’ve had things come into the pit here as well. One, a frozen grape that was thrown by a student, cracked a violin. When this happened the show went on. I thought we should have stopped immediately and sent everyone back to school. But no one asked me. Instead the student got away with it, and suffered no consequences. We now have a thin netting over the pit when we play for students. I hate it, but it’s necessary.
We actually stopped in the middle of a daytime performance of Figaro some years ago – some of
the students were throwing pieces of very hard candy into the pit from the 2nd balcony……
Someone came out in front of the curtain and explained quite a few things to the young audience, and
we continued without ay disturbances….
I really don’t that kind of behaviour is something you should get away with, and playing with a net over the pit sounds
really like giving in – if you see what I mean…
/Katarina Eriksson, Cor Anglais, Royal Opera Stockholm
…..by the way – I really like reading your blog, which I found by accident a couple of months ago!
I agree with you completely, Katarina. I was so angry when the performance wasn’t stopped. The director (and choreographer) of the company said he wouldn’t stop the performance because he wanted the students to get a performance exactly as they would get if they paid to see the production. I would suggest that they did NOT see a production exactly as they would have if they’d paid, because their disruptive and horrible behavior already changed things drastically. (When we were playing the overture we couldn’t even hear each other for the shrieking of the students.)
Nice to see you here! I’m glad you enjoy the blog, and I’m especially glad you introduced yourself!