[Dixielandjazz] Train Wrecks - Can You Top This One?

[Stephen G Barbone]

Every once in a while Bands get into train wrecks. How about this one  
for The Metropolitan Opera? Can you top it.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

March 26, 2008 - NY TIMES - By James Oestreich
Voight's Isolde is Latest Casualty in Metropolitan Opera's Tristan
Truth remained stranger than even Wagnerian fiction for the  
Metropolitan Opera’s six-performance revival of “Tristan und Isolde”  
in its fifth outing, on Tuesday. With the tenor Ben Heppner recovered  
from illness and set to assume the role of Tristan for the first time  
in the run, the Met announced that the soprano Deborah Voigt, right,  
the Isolde, was ill and would be replaced by Janice Baird. In the  
first performance, on March 10, Mr. Heppner was replaced by John Mac  
Master, who was himself later reported to have been suffering from  
allergies and was coolly received by audience and critics alike. In  
the second, Gary Lehman took over to a better reception, but the  
curtain came down in midperformance when Ms. Voigt took ill and had to  
be replaced by Ms. Baird. In the third, Ms. Voigt returned, but the  
curtain again came down prematurely, when a stage mechanism  
malfunctioned and Mr. Lehman slid down the raked stage on a pallet  
into the prompter’s box. He returned after 10 minutes and finished the  
performance. In the fourth, Mr. Lehman, still with a lump on his head,  
was replaced by Robert Dean Smith. At press time the Met was still  
holding out hope that Mr. Heppner and Ms. Voigt would finally take the  
stage together for the last performance, on Friday.