The Eva Marton singing competition in Budapest was won this weekend by a Korean tenor, Jihoon Park, 33. It was not without incident.
Our man on the spot reports:
In his semi-final Jihoon Park sang two arias. First was from La Boheme. Second was from Massenet’s Manon, the weakest of the 7 arias he sang over the three rounds. He finished at 46 minutes and 20 seconds on the ensuing livecast:
What you don’t hear on YouTube but was very very audible in the hall was that, in the last minute of singing, we heard parts of his performance being played back. My first thought was that this was a technical glitch on. It wasn’t — someone in the audience had been filming and managed to start playing back his recording before the singer had finished.
At 46 minutes and 20 seconds you see Eva Marton get very angry. She breaks in before the applause can start, starts pointing towards the area from which the play-back had come and makes comments. She then apologies to the tenor, ask the audience to applaud. The tenor bows and leaves.
Eva Marton then rises from her seat and talks directly to the area of the hall again from which the play-back had come. It’s clear the ‘guilty’ part does not speak Hungarian. She then says in English that he must leave and asks one of the ushers to make this happen. You see an usher somewhat sheepishly identifying the responsible man — who is older rather than younger. He is marched out of the hall.
I have seen this happen at football games but never seen it happen at a concert or competition. I heard some discussion on whether she had been too strict. But at the start of each session we were told that mobile phones should be turned off and this message was repeated on the TV screens showing the singers and their arias. So I think she had good grounds for getting so angry.
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