The French mezzo-soprano Katia Ledoux has gone on social media with a remarkably candid assessement of the perils of facing a fickle Vienna audience. There is good advice here for anyone having to appear before an unknown public, and we reprint it with her permission. Here’s what Katia writes:
Today I was booed on stage for the first time in my life.
Well… technically I have been booed many times in the summers when I sang in the Kinderoper Jennersdorf many years ago, where I played monsters and mean stepmothers. But there is a huge difference between being booed by kids when you play the villain in a children’s opera… and being booed by an adult… on New Year’s Eve… when you sing one of the most iconic roles in the Viennese repertoire (and one of your favourite characters ever), Prinz Orlofsky in “Die Fledermaus”.
Okay… so now… what do I do with this? Vienna is a city that is known for having a very unique audience that is very passionate about opera and loves to give detailed feedback.
This is wonderful on the one hand, because it makes us feel that what we do on stage matters deeply, but it can also be a bit scary when that passion turns against you. Nowhere else in the world do I get so many letters, messages and post-show feedback from audience members telling me in great detail what they liked and didn’t like about shows. There are online forums where typing warriors argue with each other about whether a production is good or not.
I had to leave the online forums because the sexism and homophobia was just too exhausting for me. But other than that, I have to say that I take all the feedback and criticism I get very much to heart. I feel that if someone loves this art form enough to find a way to get in touch with me and write me a personal message, the least I can do as the person on stage performing their beloved art form for them is to read it and at least give a thought about that feedback. Listening to constructive feedback can give very valuable insight and has helped me become a better
performer.
Now the problem with booing is that it is a very difficult form of feedback. I cannot be entirely sure what exactly that person was booing.
Of course, as I was leaving the stage, my colleagues all told me not to take it personally, but… how can I?
I love Die Fledermaus. I really do. The music, the humour… and I love the new Volksoper Orlofsky’s rewrite as a nihilistic and deeply depressed tragically closeted gay character. And of course, singing Die Fledermaus on New Year’s Eve in Vienna is one of the highest honours an opera singer can have.
So of course I did my best. I really did. I go over every sentence I said and think, “Maybe I didn’t speak loud enough here?” or “Maybe I was too low on that note?” because I can’t stop thinking about what would warrant such a reaction, because if I didn’t do anything wrong, the alternative is even more devastating: What if I have done nothing wrong, but have been booed because I AM something wrong? Maybe they don’t like my voice, maybe they think my technique is wrong. Or maybe they just find me extremely annoying as a person… or maybe… MAYBE it’s the ghosts of the right-wing election results that empower people to boo any artist who doesn’t conform to a very specific ideal of appearance, ethnicity, sexuality or political opinion. I don’t know, I have no way of knowing, but today I discovered a new fear of mine.
Today I really hated the feeling of being booed on stage.
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