One of the sad things about going to the opera over the years is the decline of The Ovation. When I started going to the New Met in 1966, opera was going through a sort of "last Golden Age". Night after night the casting lists were filled with names like Nilsson, Sutherland, Corelli, Rysanek, Tebaldi, Cossotto, Bumbry, Bergonzi, Tucker, Price, Siepi. One became accustomed to massive demonstrations of affection at the end of performances: the fans gathered at orchestra railing at the final curtain and called the singers out time and again. It was not unusual to have a ten or fifteen minute cheering session at the end of a FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN, a Moffo TRAVIATA, or Marvin David Levy's masterwork, MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA.
Great ovations are part of operatic lore. Sutherland's "star-is-born" first LUCIA Mad Scene at the Royal Opera or the seventeen-minute celebration after Corelli & Simionato finished their duet in the famous La Scala HUGUENOTS. Callas stopping the show for five minutes in Act I when she returned to the Met in TOSCA. The final night of the Chereau RING Cycle at Bayreuth - booed at its premiere 5 years earlier - is claimed to have sustained 90-minutes of cheers.
In my own experience, there were raptures after TURANDOTs with Nilsson & Corelli and GIOCONDAs with Tebaldi. In contrast to today, when there is usually a single group bow, one set of solo bows and maybe a final bow for everyone, in the good old days the singers would be called out repeatedly. On the night of the famous Nilsson/Caballe TURANDOT the audience continuously demanded the two divas come forth. Soon they were hugging and kissing, further stoking the fires. The same thing happened when the great Wagnerian soprano Leonie Rysanek sang one of her last Sieglindes to the next generation's Brunnhilde, Hildegard Behrens. Ecstatic applause for two of opera's legends. (Rysanek later left the "Lotte Lehmann" ring to her younger colleague.)
Individual arias could stop the show for several minutes: Caballe in BALLO or Pavarotti in ELISIR. At the City Opera, Beverly Sills took five solo bows after her first NY LUCIA Mad Scene. For a few years, chaos was the order of the day at Sills performances.
At the Met, the lowering of the asbestos curtain signalled the end of the bows. Sometimes after 10-15 minutes of applause they would turn on the house lights and start to bring the asbestos down. This invariably set off a frantic demonstration. There were some nights when we actually stopped the curtain and the singers had to come out, ducking under the white sheet of asbestos which was only a few feet from the floor. Stopping the fire curtain was an exciting moment.
I guess the most memorable ovation in which I participated took place in 1989 when Dame Gwyneth Jones (photo above) sang her first RING Cycle Brunnhildes at the Met. My friend Paul & I booked this Cycle, the first time seeing it in the course of a single week. Originally it was to have been Eva Marton; then briefly it was to be Deborah Polaski. Finally Jones was announced. There was some trepidation: Jones had a reputation for being very uneven. Her rather woozy attack and variable wobble could be really disconcerting.
She started with the WALKURE and it was clear she was at her vocal peak; the voice was enormous, warm, steady and - most of all - supremely feminine. At the end of both WALKURE and SIEGFRIED she worked the audience into a frenzy. There were endless sets of bows, and huge gales of applause & cheers whenever Jones appeared before the curtain. All that paled when GOTTERDAMMERUNG ended with her mind-blowing (no other expression suffices) Immolation Scene. The Met seemed about to explode. Jones came out again and again: with her colleagues, with Maestro Levine, and by herself. Utter pandemonium. In what seemed at last to be the "final" bow her colleagues began to applaud the Welsh diva. As she finally stepped out to leave the stage, the entire house began screaming and roaring, doubling a decibel rating that was already off the charts. She simply froze in her tracks while a massive wave of love washed over her. Needless to say, she had to come out several more times. I remember vividly the elation we all sensed when the thunder finally died down; we'd all screamed ourselves hoarse and our hands were burning. We milled around the lobby and in front of the House, not wanting the evening to end.
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