An obliging opera-goer stepped in to rescue a recent performance at the Royal Opera House. It’s rare, but not the first time a viewing singer has taken over a role

Apparently, there are no examples of an untrained passenger landing a commercial aircraft after the pilot has become incapacitated. There have, however, been a few instances when a passenger who happened to be a qualified pilot joined a depleted flight deck to helped get the plane down safely.

Something similar occurred at the Royal Opera House last week, during a performance of La Bohème. Tenor Atalla Ayan, playing Rodolfo opposite Ekaterina Siurina’s Mimi, began to experience problems with his voice. At the interval it was decided he could not carry on. Fortunately, an audience member, Charles Castronovo, offered to step in, and La Bohème – nay, opera – was saved.

The title “audience member” doesn’t quite do justice to Castronovo, a tenor of some renown, and also Siurina’s husband. Touchingly, he sang the role from the side of the stage, while Ayan continued to act the part. He did come on to take a bow at the end, wearing a denim jacket. Many tears were shed by the audience, and not because they thought it should have been them.

Like a travelling pilot leaving his seat to save a planeload of people, this doesn’t happen very often. But it happens. In 2004, the baritone Ian Vayne attended a production of Carmen in Linz and ended up taking over the role of Escamillo after the original singer suffered a heart attack in Act I. Fortunately, Vayne had played the part five months before, but after getting into costume – a shirt from lost property – he had just 15 minutes to learn the choreography for his upcoming knife fight.

Two years ago, Melissa Bayern went to see Sondheim’s Into the Woods at the Manchester Royal Exchange. When she found the Witch – a part she knew from her final performance at drama school – was being played by an understudy reading from a script, she left her details at the box office and was onstage 48 hours later. More recently, a Wigmore Hall recital was rescued by the last-minute substitution of Milly Forrest, the venue’s cloakroom attendant. She was also, as it happens, a soprano and a Royal Academy of Music graduate.

There is undoubtedly a special thrill to this kind of audience intervention, if only because it’s so exceedingly rare. But remember: these people are all trained. If you are ever in the third row when the conductor climbs up from the pit and asks if there’s a Rodolfo in the house, don’t think: how hard can it be?