Shut Up With Your Damn Coughing

In a performance of Tristan und Isolde in Dallas, Jon Vickers, while playing the part of Tristan, felt it necessary to break his character and shout to the audience, “Shut up with your damn coughing,” like a headmaster scolding naughty little boys. It didn’t work. The audience kept on coughing. Listen for yourself by clicking here. http://www.handelmania.com/dristan.mp3

Anyone who has ever attended an opera or virtually any classical music venue will testify to the fact that a suspicious outbreak of coughing occurs like magic as soon as the lights go down. If we take an audience of 3,000 and extract from them---forcibly if but we could—all the ones with viral illnesses, asthma, allergies, and smoker’s cough, we would be left with a sizable chunk of audience who would then---trust me—still cough just as regularly. They do not cough so much when they go to any sports event. No baseball game or hockey rink can match an opera audience cough for cough. Furthermore, it is fair to observe that the risk of coughing outbreak varies with the familiarity of the music. So what is really going on? And are performers justly annoyed by coughing attacks? I’ll answer the easy question first. Of course performers are justly annoyed. Now for the hard question.

The modern day opera cough seems to be the exact opposite of the Italian opera audience familiar with the art form. In some provincial opera houses in Italy, an opera takes on an atmosphere close to audience participation, complete with loud comments from the audience, and the proverbial tomato at the soprano. Italians invented opera. They love it and are very familiar with it as part of their culture. If your Dad were also the President, he would still be your Dad. His office wouldn’t keep you from giving him a hard time. You might even have more fun tackling him in a family football game. That’s the way the Italians treat opera, with great respect but with great familiarity. We call that “love.” But most North Americans don’t “love” opera or great classical music. Instead of evoking “love,” classical music evokes feelings of personal inadequacy, insecurity and fear of discovery. North Americans are afraid they will be “found out” and discovered to be stupid. It is an unnecessary fear for we are all ignorant of something! As soon as the music starts, people experience a challenge to their self-images. It is not comfortable. They don’t like the feeling. The need to cough comes through the reflexes from this psychological uncomfortability.  Partly an attention getting device, it says, “I am still here and I am important even though this music makes me feel stupid and small.” That is why handing out cough drops to the audience before the show will not work, and also why Jon Vickers’ scolding did not stop even one cough during his “Dristan” and Isolde.

I stumbled on this curious effect during a performance I gave for a small college. I gave what I thought was a usual type voice recital for a college or university but what I received from the audience was anything but “usual.” As soon as I started to sing, students began throwing things at one another, whistling, cat-calling. It looked sort of like the food fight scene in Animal House! I valiantly went on and sang as though nothing were happening. When, mercifully, the concert was over, the music faculty met me back stage and offered words of congratulations along with these remarks: “I thought the students did very well today. Usually they are much worse than this! You see, most of these kids come from low-income families where there was no exposure to culture, so when they experience it they don’t know how to act.”

The problem with opera “as entertainment”—which is how Opera America has tried to buy the opera audience—is that opera is not at all entertaining to people who do not “love” it as the Italians do. If we wish to see opera survive into the next century we will have to kindly, gently and lovingly educate an audience. Telling them to “Shut up their damn coughing” will do no good. We all know how difficult the education process is from our experience in other areas. It is not easy and it is not quick. Perhaps we should make a start of it if we have any hopes of curing the coughs.