Opera tenor Roberto Alagna. (Marco Brescia/Teatro alla Scala/Associated Press)
When opera star Roberto Alagna stalked off stage amid a cacophony of boos during the Dec. 10 performance of Aida at Milan’s famed La Scala theatre, he joined a diverse list of like-minded entertainers. From fiery tenors to combustible rockers, here are nine other memorable instances where singers decided to exit stage left.
Tough crowd
While singing the title role of Verdi’s Don Carlo for the first time late in his career (1992), Luciano Pavarotti hits a sour note and is booed offstage by the notoriously unforgiving La Scala audience in Milan. Adding insult to the famed Italian tenor’s injury: microphones capture the incident and bootleg tapes of the blunder soon make the rounds among opera enthusiasts.
Champagne Supernova in the eye
Never one for putting up with hostile crowds (or for mincing words), Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher issues a sharp rebuke to apish fans at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum in April 1996 after his brother, guitarist Noel, is struck in the eye with a coin. “We’re not a bunch of f------ monkeys,” Liam tells the crowd before Oasis calls off the concert after only five songs.
‘I didn’t say I wanna rock!’
“Are there any Nickelback fans in Portugal?” the band’s frontman, Chad Kroeger, demands of the crowd at the Ilha do Ermal festival in August 2002 after being dinged by a water bottle. “It’s up to you. Do you want to hear some rock ’n’ roll or do you want to go home?” Kroeger perhaps means it as a rhetorical question, but an audience member responds by drilling him in the back of the head with what looks like a large rock. The Alberta band counters by quickly exiting the stage.Loose lips synch ships
During a performance on Saturday Night Live in October 2004, pop princess Ashlee Simpson is caught off-guard when a pre-recorded track of her singing Pieces of Me comes on while her band is in the middle of another song, Autobiography. A flustered Simpson briefly breaks into an Irish jig before slinking off stage. “I made a complete fool of myself,” Simpson laments on MTV two days later, adding that she had planned to use a backing track to compensate for a weak voice as a result of acid reflux.
Can’t you read the signs?
After being pelted with plastic bottles, boos and chants of “F--- Fred Durst” during the first half-hour of Limp Bizkit’s set at the 2003 Summer Sanitarium show in Chicago, the band’s frontman unleashes a torrent of profanity before storming off. According to Bob Gendron, who reviews the show for the Chicago Tribune, “From the very beginning of the show, there were people in the crowd with Fred Sucks banners, and every time one of the other bands mentioned Limp Bizkit, [the audience] booed.”
Under pressure
Canadian tenor Ben Heppner cuts short a performance at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall in January 2002 after his voice cracks repeatedly. “I think for us all, I need to stop,” Heppner tells the stunned audience. His handlers later blame the incident on blood-pressure medication.
Appetite for destruction
Guns N’ Roses singer Axl Rose has a way of inspiring ruin. In August 1992, GN’R was booked in at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. First, the band made the audience wait two hours before taking the stage. Once they did, Rose whined about the sound system. Implying he had a sore throat, Rose walked off stage 50 minutes into the set. Fans showed their displeasure by looting the stadium, setting fires and damaging 30 police cruisers outside. Twelve people were arrested.
Flippin’ fiddler
In August 2000, less than a year after allegedly hurling racial slurs and other profanities in a bizarre 20-minute rant during a Halifax New Year’s Eve performance, Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac flips off a club crowd in Chatham, Ont., and stalks off after a fan makes his way onstage.
Practice makes perfect?
At an open dress rehearsal for Il Trovatore at the Vienna State Opera in 1978, eccentric Italian star Franco Bonisolli responds to booing by tossing his sword to the ground and storming off stage. The performance, due to be televised, is cancelled, and Bonisolli is replaced by Spanish tenor Placido Domingo.
Jesse Campigotto is a Toronto writer.
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