A Royal Opera House production of Guillaume Tell (William Tell) that opened in London’s Covent Garden on Monday night was heckled and booed for incorporating a scene in which a young woman is stripped naked and molested by army officers.

Rossini’s work of 1829 tells the story of the Swiss patriot who shoots an arrow that splits an apple atop his son’s head, and is famed for its overture with the galloping horse theme used in the Lone Ranger TV series.



On opening night, though, it was marked mostly for Italian director Damiano Michieletto’s inclusion of a female actor, who is not part of the singing cast, being abused during a banquet by a group of officers in the Austrian army.

The officers force champagne down the woman’s throat, molest her with a gun and, in the scene that caused the most commotion, strip her and force her to lie on top of the banquet table.



There was plenty of cheering for the singers and musicians, but the audience reaction to the nudity was so strong in Britain’s usually decorous opera venue that Kasper Holten, the ROH’s director of opera, issued a statement afterwards expressing sorrow for any distress caused.



“The production includes a scene which puts the spotlight on the brutal reality of women being abused during war time, and sexual violence being a tragic fact of war,” Holten said.



“The production intends to make it an uncomfortable scene, just as there are several upsetting and violent scenes in Rossini’s score. We are sorry if some people have found this distressing.”

Michieletto has assembled an all-star cast for the production, including American tenor John Osborn, Canadian baritone Gerald Finley and Swedish soprano Malin Bystrom, with ROH music director Antonio Pappano conducting.

Osborn, who plays a Swiss patriot torn between his love of his country and his love for Bystrom’s Austrian Princess Mathilde, said that perhaps the controversial scene went on longer than necessary.

“Maybe it went a little longer than it should have, but it happened and I think it’s an element you can use to show just how horrible these people were that were occupying this town,” he said.

Michieletto said he had no intention of changing anything. “If you don’t feel the brutality, the suffering these people have had to face, if you want to hide it, it becomes soft, it becomes for children,” he said backstage after the boos had died down following the final curtain.

Reaction continued after the performance:

ROH Guillaume Tell: Chandelier. Camp Gesler... and a revolve that goes BOTH WAYS! Plus a gang rape scene in the ballet - enormous booing. — Mark Pullinger (@larkingrumple) June 29, 2015

Senseless, sensationalist Guillaume Tell complete with gratuitous nude rape scene @RoyalOperaHouse represents new nadir. Heads should roll. — Michael Arditti (@michaelarditti) June 29, 2015

The Royal Opera House afterwards posted an article on its website by writer-in-residence Sarah Hibberd that did not touch on the scene, but readers took the opportunity to comment nonetheless. “I should especially single out the gratuitous rape scene which was totally unnecessary and received almost universal disapproval and much booing,” wrote commenter Tim Moorey.

Others turned their fire on fellow audience members: “Their booing during the torment and attempted rape scene; their cat-calling directly to Gerald Finley about his singing; their cries of ‘Shame on you Tony’ spoiled my experience of the opera,” wrote Janice Evans.

George Hall, in an opening night review for The Stage, gave it one star, saying that as the production unfolded “one feeble idea succeeded another”:

One scene, in which the Swiss women are supposed to be made to dance by the Austrian soldiery, is ramped up into a gratuitous gang-rape that provokes the noisiest and most sustained booing I can ever recall during any performance at this address. Intellectually poverty-stricken, emotionally crass and with indifferent stagecraft, the result is nowhere near the standard an international company should be aiming at.

Some of the reaction on Twitter was supportive:

Wondering if a scene like THAT one in #ROHTell would've provoked a similar reaction in a film, or in 'straight' theatre...Thoughts? — Katherine Cooper (@ZwischenKath) June 29, 2015

My first applause to GIoachino Rossini and forever: his Guillaume Tell is just glorious! Choir Singers Orchestra of #ROH #TonyPappano:BRAVI! — Anna Bonitatibus (@AnnaBonitatibus) June 29, 2015

Mark Valencia, writing for What’s On Stage, said it was the latest manifestation of a “fast-growing problem” of opening night booing at the ROH but this was the first case of it happening during the music.

The reason? The Italian director Damiano Michieletto has opted to stage a gang rape to Rossini’s attractive music … Irrespective of the quality or otherwise of Michieletto’s concept, this scene was no more explicit than equivalent moments in a host of other productions.