MANNERS OF AUDIENCES

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1786, 24 July 1926, Page 2

MANNERS OF AUDIENCES

OFTEN YEIIY BAI). A PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT. It will be generally admitted that the manners of audiences are bad. No person of refinement ever attends any performance —musical, dramatic, or other—without feeling how badly a lot of his neighbours behave. There are those who come in late, there are those whi insist upon humming, beating time, murmuring words, or otherwise assisting the artists, those who have come to talk things over, those whose infirmities require them to cough, moan, grunt, or otherwise protest against life’s burden. Which of these offences is hardest to bear must be a matten of taste and fancy. Good authority can be found for the opinion that of all theatre nuisances, the hungry damsel, the earnest devourer, of chocolates, is the most irritating. This may be masculine prejudice, though it is to be admitted that the prowess of some of these suckers and munchers does excite apprehension. But probably the most generally execrated are the late coiners. Everybody who was in time hates them for several passionate moments. Mr Leopold Stokowski, who conducts the (Philadelphia Orchestra, has been feeling very keenly about this. The Philadelphians even complicated the offenoe. Like Charles Lamb, they made up for coming late by going away early. They arrived after the concert had begun, and went away before it had finished. Mr iStokowski decided that something had to be done about it. At his last concert the curtain rose to display only two violins of all the orchestra present. After a while the conductor strolled to his desk, and lie 1 and the two violins began. The rest of the band wandered to their places one by one and joined in as they were ready. Then the full orchestra played two pieces. A third was begun, but in the course of it one musician after another fell out, “leaving Stokowski to conduct an imaginary orchestra, which at the end of an imaginary piece he ordered to rise and bow to the audience.” The reception, as the dramatic critics say, was mixed, Our own sympathies (says the London Daily Telegraph) are all with Mr iStokowski, but we must pronounce his methods startling. The form of punishment administered to the Philadelphians is surely unique. Many penalties, perhaps most, scourge the innocent as well as the guilty. It is Mr Stokowski’s triumph to have devised a punishment which leaves the guilty unscatclied, and 'falls on the innocent alone. The righteous who came in time lost part of them usic they had paid for. The righteous who stayed courteously; to th,e end got nothing for - their painsb-. TJie fjipners ,who ; came late and left iearly.'had a'll they •wanted, Mr Stokowski must thing again.