3 Operas Cut Short by Death

Tragedies or mishaps cut three performances short. A 1988, “Macbeth” was canceled after the second act, when a member of the audience leaped to his death during intermission. A 1996 “Makropulos Case” was canceled soon after it began when the tenor Richard Versalle suffered a fatal heart attack onstage (just after singing the line “Too bad, you can only live so long”). And earlier this season, a matinee of Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell” was canceled after the second intermission, after an audience member was spotted sprinkling white powder into the orchestra pit, prompting fears of an anthrax attack. (In fact, he was scattering the ashes of an opera-loving friend in what he later called “a sweet gesture to a dying friend that went completely and utterly wrong in ways that I could never have imagined.”)

7 There From the Start

Seven Met employees have worked at the new house since it opened: José Burgos, a ticket taker; Loretta Di Franco, a soprano who is now a diction coach; Gildo Di Nunzio, an assistant conductor; Arthur Griffenkranz, in the props department; Richard Holmes, who is in charge of nonsinging supernumeraries; Susan Jolles, a harpist in the orchestra; and Marilyn Stroh, a violist.