I don't do a lot of this at the moment, and some recent experiences have reminded me why.

A couple of weeks back, I attended an excellent performance of Edward Bond's unique comedy 'The Sea' at the Haymarket.  Eileen Atkins and (particularly) David Haig gave superb performances.  However,  there were a number of draw-backs to the evening, which set my teeth on edge: firstly, there's the business of late-comers, or 'last minute' arrivals - people who are determined to take their time finishing their cigarettes, or their conversations and don't think it should be any great hardship to you if they have to force you to stand up so they can belatedly reach their seats.  Secondly - and this is something new to me - the habit of some idiot audience members to comment among themselves about the action onstage, as if they were watching a television programme at home: the offending members in this case were a pack of garrullous Italians (they sounded Italian, anyway).  Maybe Dario Fo encourages this kind of thing, but I didn't find it terribly welcome.

Two days later, I attended the BRSO Wagner concert at the RFH (IGI was there, too, apparently!).  I'd not been to the RFH since 2000, so was expecting great things of the new improved acoustics - yet the place sounded just as it always had done, to my ears at least. Still, no matter: my enjoyment in this instance was spoiled by someone about four seats to the left of me, who was (and you may chuckle) breathing very loudly.  So loudly, that it became a serious distraction, particularly when it came to the sparsely orchestrated Wesendonck songs.  During a pause in proceedings, I glanced over in the direction of the offensive person and noticed that he had his eyes closed, in the manner of Karajan conducting a Bruckner symphony.  I did think about having a word with him, but it struck me that the polite request 'Excuse me - would you mind not breathing?' might be misconstrued. 

And isn't the RFH rear stalls section a veritable hencoop? I managed to escape my allotted seat after the first item, and found a more comfortable berth further down.

Finally, there's ticket prices: I got a good seat for 'The Sea', albeit with an Equity concession. taking it to £20.00 - reasonable, but  - I'd argue -still five pounds dearer than it need have been. The RFH was £17.00 - again, about five quid too dear, I'd say, especially when the sum total of the evening was less than pleasant.


All told, is it really any surprise that people prefer to stay at home, with their CDs and DVDs?  Other people can really come close to wrecking the 'live experience'. 

There's no contradiction of course: the live experience can be as wonderful as it can be precisely because it can so easily be otherwise. The most wonderful live performances are when the entire audience holds its breath for what seems like forever; every time you go to a performance it can be that kind of communion (in the literal sense...), or it can be one of those occasions where even people's breathing annoys you. Of course it's nearly always somewhere in between...

I'm usually very intolerant of others making noises when I'm at a concert or play. Yet I can sit at home listening to some music with the rain hammering down outside and it doesn't bother me at all.

A few weeks ago, at one of the concerts which I help to run, I went into the auditorium about 5 minutes before the concert was due to start and immediately noticed that over the other side there was a woman with a small child of 2 or 3 who was looking at a book and babbling away to himself quite loudly. There were several other "officials" sitting near her, but none of them said anything to her. So I walked over and asked her if she thought it was fair on the rest of the audience. She said she'd take him out if he made a noise and I replied that he was already making a lot of noise. So she left, quite amicably. She asked for her money back, though heaven knows why she'd brought him to the concert. At the interval, one of the others said to me "there was no noise from that child"

Entirely agreed with your two probs, Strina, but I think there is a third..   studio-produced recordings, with all of the "enhancing" effects that are twiddled into them, encourage an expectation of sound which is unrealistic in live performance.

For myself, the difference between fresh and canned is like the difference between night and day - but there's a segment of the audience (that I fear is increasing in size) who pay for their ticket and then expect to hear the Deutsche Gramofon recording recreated in front of them...  and won't accept any other way of performing it.  The recent "understudies" debacles involving Netrebko, Terfel, Heppner, Voigt, Heppner, and others highlight the problem...  audiences have ceased to understand that the performer is a human being with human frailties (such as illness).  So mercantile have audiences become that they believe the ticket-price they've paid has bought them not just admission, but the performer's human dignity, immortal soul and body too    

Recently on TOP there have been some nasty incidents in which one enraged opera fan began an online hate-campaign against a singer who'd been forced to scrub from some ROH performances.  These messages became increasingly deranged, and moved from the merely spiteful and libellous into the realm of potentially criminal threats.  Although the member's access to the forum was deleted, he has recently turned up again, in what I can only describe as "stalking".  He's been once-again deleted, but I'm concerned that he may simply follow more byzantine and unpleasant routes to pursue his vindictive hatred

Yes, Reiner, I agree with this entirely as well.  It's more than just the sound of recording, too.  I think the reliability and "perfection" of recording has made audiences (and some performers, too!) forget that performing is about taking risks, pushing what you can do and what you want to express to the limits - and being allowed the right to possibly fail.  It can be a profoundly moving experience to watch a performer struggle with something bigger than himself, and gradually find his way back into it again.  But the "perfection" of recordings has meant audiences don't trust their own response in the moment, and focus on what was "wrong."

I wonder about the implicit subtext at play in this debate, implying recording is at best a second-hand version of live performance? I can't accept that at all; recording has its own unique qualities and merits, just as does (say) electronic music. I suspect further romantic ideologies of 'authenticity', as opposed to that which is artifically 'manufactured' may be hovering beneath the surface as well.

As for the idea of the 'perfect performance/recording'; the place that has always most got to me was in rock/pop music; the world of difference (even aesthetic difference) between live performances recordings being, to my ears, far greater, for the most part, than those in classical music. 

I certainly wouldn't go a far as to make that kind of assumption myself, although - to use your own words - there can surely be little doubt that some recordings are considerably more "artificially manufactured" than others. Concern for some kind of lack of what you might call "authenticity" is not what's behind my views on the subject (which are, in any case, only my views, after all)...