Kukuks Klatsch

Sometimes I wonder what people understand about what I do for a living. I guess it really isn’t important to people what it’s like. They know the basics anyway; they know that I sing on stage, that I have to be in costume and make-up, that people clap for me at the end of a performance.

One thing that I will never get used to, though, is the German unison-clapping thing. Every time that a German audience gets excited about a performance, they start clapping in rhythm together. When an entire audience claps, all together, in rhythm, as loud as they can, it is very loud, deafeningly loud. I know they are doing it out of admiration for us and everything, but, every time this happens, I just get so weirded out. I can only seem to think of the Third Reich and some march where Swastikas will fly and books burn. Even after having lived here for more than 2 years, it is just plain freaky.

So, we are all exhausted, standing there on stage in giant formations, sometimes with complicated orders on who bows when, the audience is clapping away...CRASH, CRASH, CRASH, and the assistant director, in charge of the Applausordnung, starts yelling, literally at the top of her lungs: “SOLOISTS FORWARD!!!”, “CHORUS FORWARD!!!”, “AND...BOW!!!” The curtain goes down. The roar is temporarily dulled. “EVERYONE OFF. REORDER!!!” The curtain swing up, “SUPERNUMERARIES ON!!!” And the whole thing starts again. German audiences are generally more subdued than others throughout the world, that is, they don’t clap unnecessarily during the opera. The good German just sits in his seat and shuts the hell up until the end. They see the end as the “correct” way they can voice their opinion. This means that, as a performer, you have no idea whether the audience enjoys it or not until the end. But, if you did good, know that the applause will go on and on for days.

Maybe it is just because, by the end of a show, blood sugar has plummeted, but this whole group-applause thing has to rank in the top 3 of the most surreal experiences of my life. It deserves a revered spot, on the list, though, because it is on-going. Bizarre. Truly bizarre.