1. La Muette de Portici (Auber), Brussels, 1830

The only opera performance ever to have sparked a political revolution. A duet about patriotism triggered demonstrations in the Théâtre de la Monnaie that spread across the city, ending in the revolution that established Belgian independence.

2. Salome (Strauss), Covent Garden, 1949

The combination of Richard Strauss's violent music, based on Oscar Wilde's play, in a production by the 24-year-old Peter Brook, with designs by Salvador Dalí, caused outrage among critics and audiences in London. Brook was banished from Covent Garden.

3. Parsifal (Wagner), Bayreuth, 1951

The production that changed the staging of opera. Wieland Wagner, the composer's grandson, swept all the clutter and associations of his grandfather's operas off the stage. Traditionalists loathed it.

4. Mazeppa (Tchaikovsky), ENO, 1984

David Alden's gruesome blood-soaked low-budget production, known from that day to this as "the chainsaw Mazeppa" opened the door to a new era of innovative in-your-face opera stagings in the UK.

5. The Death of Klinghoffer (Adams), Brussels and Brooklyn, 1991

The Death Of Klinghoffer by English National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera.

John Adams's opera about the murder of a Jewish tourist by Palestinian hijackers was dropped for a decade after protests following the premiere.

6. Don Giovanni (Mozart), Glyndebourne, 1994

What, booing at Glyndebourne? Yes, it really happened when traditionalist patrons reacted against Deborah Warner's feminist restaging in a brutalist set of Mozart's classic opera.

7. Don Giovanni (Mozart), ENO, 2001

Calixto Bieito's Don Giovanni at English National Opera, 2004.

Calixto Bieito's critically panned take on Mozart's opera featured drink, drugs, yob culture and urinating on stage. Audiences booed but kept on buying tickets for all Bieito's shows.

8. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Wagner), Bayreuth, 2007

Bayreuth, Wagner's hymn to German art, got the interventionist treatment from his great-granddaughter, Katharina Wagner, in her debut production at the Wagner festival in Bavaria. The Bayreuth booing made her famous – though the name also helped.

9. La Sonnambula (Bellini), New York Metropolitan Opera, 2009

Unlike Europeans, American audiences, normally fed on traditional productions, rarely boo. But they got the habit when Mary Zimmerman moved Bellini's opera from the Alps to New York.

10. Rusalka (Dvořák), Covent Garden, 2012

Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito set Dvořák's fairytale in a brothel and had the Covent Garden audience erupting in protest.