A Lunch-Hour Current-Events Commentary

I'm not exactly an opera fan, but I couldn't help catch the news about French tenor Roberto Alagna storming off the stage following a booing at Milan's La Scala opera house.

Now an opera singer throwing a hissy-fit over something like that isn't exactly that interesting.  (Opera singers over-react?  Somebody cue the Claude Rains picture.)  What makes this all noteworthy and amusing (in my mind) are his comments to reporters afterwards.

To wit:

"I went there to sing, to give the audience joy and pleasure. But what was I supposed to do when some people started booing? What if they had thrown stones at me or some crazy person had attacked me? La Scala should have protected me, the show should have been suspended.

"Instead they carried on as if nothing had happened. After all, John Lennon ended up being killed."

That's right, being booed on stage is now comparable to being stalked and murdered by a crazed loner.  Of course, there is at least one major difference between people who booed Alagna and Mark David Chapman — the latter at least appeared to be a fan of the entertainer he became involved with.

To commemorate this (Alagna, not Chapman), CBC has put up a list of other memorable moments when performers left the stage.  There are a few obvious ones (Axel Rose's 1992 Montreal performance, Ashlee Simpson's Saturday Night Live lip-syncing debacle), plus others including this one:

"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.

Excuse me, I think I'm tearing up.