ON WITH THE SHOW

Headline writers love a story that is ripe for potential puns. I'm sure they were all over this story about soprano Joyce DiDonato breaking her leg during a performance of The Barber of Seville. (Hence, the title of the article: All-star cast: Opera fans to see DiDonato perform with plaster.)

"DiDonato, who sings the lead female role of Rosina in the Covent Garden performances, slipped on stage during a scene change towards the end of the first act on Saturday night.

She completed the performance with the aid of a stick and a crutch. An announcement was made after the interval that she had sprained her ankle, but was determined to complete the performance. When she reappeared singing Rosina's line 'I've a cramp in my foot', the audience's applause briefly halted the show."

My sympathies to Joyce and her broken fibula, but you know how I love stage anecdotes like these. It made me think of the interview with Falstaff's Production Stage Manager Valerie Wheeler. She shared some opera follies:

"A singer portraying a nun accidentally got her wimple caught in the door as she entered because I called the cue to close the door too soon. The wimple actually jammed the door. After several attempts at discretely getting her wimple free, she gave up and simply sang the entire scene with her head caught in the door. What else was a nun to do?

In another production, the main curtain got stuck on the way out (read, not my fault). It only got as high as the singers waists before snagging. The music had started, the singers were singing, but all the audience could see were the singers legs. Some of the singers actually squatted down to sing under the curtain. We had to stop the show, fix the curtain, and start over."

I feel like this post deserves a hearty ba-dum-ching.

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