The Vienna Opera did not hear it that way. The regional criminal court in the Austrian capital sentenced a German doctor in April. The sentence – a suspended prison sentence – was accompanied by a life ban from setting foot in the Wiener Staatsoper again. The reasons for this ban? The doctor had become remarkably angry in the middle of a performance of La Traviata in October and threatened other spectators.
For the individual, the evening had started badly. The doctor was forced to change places when he arrived in the room, which was playing to sold-out crowds. He bends reluctantly to the maneuver. Then, a few minutes later, the man cracks in front of the staging of Simon Stone who lands a car in Verdi’s melodrama. “Ashamed ! It’s advertising for a brand of cars!”, vociferates the doctor, according to the German daily Bild.
The 55-year-old starts filming the scene with his cell phone – which, by the way, is prohibited. His neighbors, inconvenienced, begged him to please stop the session. The German doctor insults them in return and threatens them, fist in the air, to “turn them into minced meat”.
Inflexible in the face of the opera employees who urged him to please calm down or leave the premises, the individual was finally seized by police forces and exfiltrated to the applause of the public, during a brief interruption of the performance. The raging spectator, who was not intoxicated, was later released. He was not present on the day of his sentencing.
