Live Performances Gone Awry

I attended a performance by musical genius Hermeto Pascoal at NYC's Town Hall back in the late '80's. A couple of minutes into the third tune, he abruptly cut the band off and walked off stage; end of show. I spoke to one of his saxophonists later that night, and he told me that Hermeto was pissed-off that the audience was not being more attentive.

I was playing in the pit of the Broadway show "Showgun" during one of the preview performances. As the actor Phillip Casnoff was about to sing a number titled "Death Walk", a large screen which was part of the scenery fell and hit him on the head. The performance was, of course, stopped and Casnoff was rushed to the hospital.

During a performance of Janacek's "The Makropulos Case" at the Met Opera the tenor Richard Versalle was singing the role of Vitek. In the opening scene he climbs a ladder to retrieve a book off a shelf. As he sang the words "too bad you can only live so long", he suffered a fatal heart attack and fell to the floor on his back.

Nothing too memorable concerning a performance other than a crowd of non ticket holders trying to rush the door at the Spectrum during a Yes/Emerson Lake and Palmer concert in the early 70's. Philly's finest with the irrepressible Frank Rizzo at the helm were in full force knowing well that there was a demand for tickets that far exceeded supply. Clubs were weilded and the uprising was abruptly stopped in its tracks.

In the mid 70's at Tampa Stadium I was at a Fleetwood Mac concert when someone close to us on the ground got the idea to attach firecrackers on a supply of frizbees he had brought and light them prior to tossing them into the crowd. My girlfriend a nurse, became distressed watching this continue and went up to the guy, who was stone drunk, grabbed the frizbees and proceeded to distribute them to surrounding folks to throw to keep the guy from continuing. She then angrily lectured him about his irresponsible behavior, to little avail. She then tried to take the firecrackers when he pushed her down to the ground at which point several men restrained him and took the firecrackers. He was eventually removed by Security personnel.

Unsound, in the examples you cite it seems at classical perfomances it is the audience that goes awry not the performers.

Imagine Perlman to drunk to play or Pavarotti forgetting lyrics because the is stoned.

I agree with Entrope. One of the incredible things about classical is that the performers never give anything less than a faultlessly professional performance. :)

There are so many instances of classical music disaster stories. I have a great many of them myself. One of the funniest ones involves a trombone player who did not realize that the overture, which he did not play on, was very short, and he went deep into the basement of the hall to practice a little. A piano concerto was next on the program. Well, it took them TEN MINUTES to find the guy. In the meantime, the audience is just sitting there. Think about this - ten minutes is an excruciatingly long time for this to be happening. The conductor of course had gone offstage after the applause for the overture, and neither he or the soloist has come on. Finally, after this ten minutes of dead silence, the trombone player comes out on stage. Now he sat in the back row on a riser, and behind this riser was all the percussion equipment. The chairs on this back row were of the type that are all connected together. Now it so happened that BOTH of the back legs of this trombonist's chair were hanging off the back end of the riser, and no one had noticed this. Accordingly, again remembering that this is after ten minutes of dead silence, this trombonist finally comes on stage, sits down, and the entire row of chairs falls off the riser backwards, into all of the percussion equipment, with a horrendous noise. Amazingly, no one was hurt, and no instruments were damaged. But what a hilarious thing to happen after ten minutes of dead silence!!

I actually have my own very similar falling off a riser in a concert story, but it pales in comparison to that one. It was only my own chair, I wasn't hurt, and my horn was undamaged. I got up and waved to the audience.