Let Them Eat Bananas

"Painters paint on canvas," Conductor Leopold Stokowski once lectured an unruly audience. "We paint our tone pictures on silence. Only you can supply that."

But they never do. In fact, when the house lights go down on a concert today, it is often the audience that strikes up the overture. It is a kind of barnyard symphonette. The Hummer and the Time Beater serve as the rhythm section; the Cellophane Crinkler and the Program Rattler handle the solos. In the percussion section, the principal performers are the Bracelet Jangler and the Premature Clapper, while special effects are contributed by the Knuckle Cracker and the Watch Wind er. The Coughers' Chorale is directed by the Dry-Throated, Red-Nosed Hacker, whose feeblest lead always gets a resounding antiphonal response. The entire performance is choreographed by Fidgeter, produced and upstaged by that notorious team of Latecomer and Earlyleaver.

Shattered Mood. Lumped together, they are the Intruders, the most ill-mannered group ever to plague U.S. concert halls and opera houses--and they seem to be more prevalent today than ever before. One theory is that they are the illegitimate offspring of the cultural explosion. Another is that audiences are exposed to so much classical music today that they have grown calluses on their manners. Whatever the cause, the intruders are multiplying, and nothing short of muzzles and straitjackets seems likely to deter them. In general, Manhattan audiences are the least respectful, Chicago's the most punctual, Philadelphia's the least excitable, Boston's the best behaved. Sniffs one Boston Symphony official: "We mind our manners whether on the street or in Symphony Hall."

The worst intruders are the latecomers. Most concert halls today refuse to seat late arrivals until there is a logical break in the music. In Manhattan, as much as 15% of an audience, elbows at the ready, will come clomping down the aisle between movements of a symphony. Complains one critic: "A listener's mood is broken--no, shattered --when he is removed from the tonal world that has just been established. And just because some inconsiderate couple felt like dawdling over their coffee." To teach latecomers a lesson, Stokowski once had his musicians wander idly off-and onstage while playing a Mozart symphony. Another time he turned to the audience and conducted the coughers: "All right, cough!" he commanded. "I want a rhythmic cough! Make it louder!"

Mute Fruit. Classical Guitarist Andres Segovia recently stopped a performance in Chicago, whipped out an enormous handkerchief, and honked and wheezed along with the audience. Jascha Heifetz prefers the withering glare or, if things get too bad, departure. The late Sir Thomas Beecham was even less subtle, once whirled on the podium and roared: "Shut up, you fools!"

As for the dreaded cellophane crinkler, critics recommend that mute fruit --something nice and quiet like bananas--should be sold at intermissions instead of candy. Conductor Eugene Ormandy, who has been jolted from his sleep by a radiator whistling off-key, recently requested that women check their dangly bracelets before entering the concert hall. It would not be so bad, reports New York Times Critic Harold Schonberg, if "all the bracelets weren't differently pitched." Schonberg is also bugged by serious types who lug music scores to the performance. They turn their pages in unison and sound "like a bunch of locusts going through a wheatfield." To help separate himself from such extraneous noises, one Manhattan concertgoer cups two programs to his ears.

The audience-participation show, suggests Metropolitan Opera Director Rudolf Bing, is the result of "a general deterioration of manners everywhere, spurred by the Beatles and similar creatures." He should know. Met audiences often seem better suited for Ringo than Rossini. They stroll in (often well beyond the 8 p.m. curtain) and out during a performance like browsers at a rummage sale. Indeed, they tend to sample rather than to sit through an opera. Some members of the Metropolitan Opera Club, an exclusive group of 100 leading citizens, pop into their special boxes long enough to hear their favorite aria, then float out to the bar. When Joan Sutherland sang Lucia di Lammermoor last season, the audience stayed to see her death scene and then fled in droves, leaving the poor tenor to suffer through his death scene all but unattended. The Met is also infested with claques, leather-lunged gangs of professional cheerleaders who are hired by a performer to whoop it up after every aria he sings. They are bothersome, but not half so bad as one latecomer who recently straight-armed her way into a front-row seat and jostled Conductor Georges Pretre with such a shattering blow that he had to stop the music and begin again.

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