Should staged operas include encores?

Angela Gheorghiu as Floria Tosca, San Francisco Opera, Nov. 2012. Photo: Madamabutterfly, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Angela Gheorghiu’s recent performance in a South Korean production of Puccini’s “Tosca” was supposed to be uneventful: Floria Tosca is, after all, a role Gheorghiu has sung hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times throughout her long career.

Then the unthinkable happened. Gheorghiu’s castmate, Alfred Kim, responded to the audience’s rapturous applause after he sang the famous aria “E lucevan le stelle” by beginning an encore. Gheorghiu, enraged that Kim would pause the opera to repeat the same aria again, walked out on stage, signaled to stop the orchestra, and demanded: “It’s a performance; it’s not a recital. Respect the audience. Respect me.”

The backlash to Gheorghiu’s prima donna behavior has been swift.

Since the event, Gheorghiu and South Korea’s Sejong Center for the Performing Arts have engaged in a battle of publicist statements about who was at fault: Gheorghiu claims she had an agreement there would be no encores. The Sejong Center acknowledges she made such a request, but says they never actually agreed to it.

No matter who is at fault for miscommunication about an agreement (or lack thereof), Gheorghiu’s behavior is reprehensible and created far more of a disruption to the audience’s enjoyment of the opera than Kim’s encore ever could. Gheorghiu deserved the cascade of boos that met her at the final curtain call.

But is she wrong?

Gheorghiu’s shameful public objection aside, an argument can certainly be made that opera is ultimately a dramatic art form, and interrupting the drama’s flow with an encore only detracts from the experience as the composer and librettist intended it.

Would it be acceptable to encore Puccini’s “O soave fanciulla” from “La bohème” — an aria almost as famous as “E lucevan le stelle” — even after Rodolfo and Mimì drift off into the distance? Certainly not. How about Isolde’s “Liebestod” at the conclusion of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde?” As eye-popping it may be to see Isolde pick herself up, dust herself off, and cry out to the conductor, “Wieder!”, the obvious answer is a resolute no.

Then again, the performing arts exist to serve the audience, and if the audience wants the joy of another “E lucevan le stelle,” who are we to deny them? Just be sure everyone is on the same page before the performance begins.

What do you think? Should staged operas include encores?

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One Comment on “Should staged operas include encores?”

  1. As a 0netime actor , singer and lifelong opera. buff , I stand with Angela Georghiu . The general public has no idea that performing opera is a very emotional experience, involving immense physical exertion,memory of words and music. I am against excessive applause, which often stops the continuity for too long . Perhaps Georghiu’s reaction was a little excessive, but in opera emotions are very high . Angela Georghiu is one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th/21st century and her wishes should have been respected.

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