One way to get a gig...

[JB]

Audience member replaces heart attack-stricken opera lead
(Tue, 02 Nov 2004)


VIENNA - A man who started the evening sitting in the audience for a production of the opera Carmen, ended the night onstage receiving kudos after he replaced a stricken opera singer.

Baritone Ian Vayne had been watching a Monday performance of the Bizet opera at the Landestheater in the city of Linz, Austria, when one of the leads suffered a heart attack in the second act.

"[Vayne] jumped onstage without makeup or costume and, without having warmed up his voice, finished the opera in place of Lauri Vasar," Elisabeth Egger-Mann, a spokesperson for the Landestheater, said on Tuesday.

The audience of about 700 was enthusiastic about Vayne's impromptu performance, she said.

She added that doctors said Vasar's condition was "satisfactory" and that he was recovering nicely.

The opera company has enlisted the quick-acting Vayne to replace the recuperating Vasar in the role of Escamillo, the handsome matador who lures Carmen away from Don José.

Vayne, a singer who works in the German city of Mannheim, said he "never expected something like this to happen."

[tubacdk]

...that'd never happen in the US. Union stagehands would be wrestling the audience member off the stage immediately.