Royal Opera House audience boos nude rape scene

The opening night of William Tell at the Royal Opera House has been marked by boos over a rape scene with nudity, reports BBC News.

The Opera House issued a statement after the performance of Guillaume Tell apologising for any distress caused.


Director of opera Kasper 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."


Holten said the scene "puts the spotlight on the brutal reality of women being abused during war time, and sexual violence being a tragic fact of war."


Rossini's opera of the Swiss patriot, William Tell, who shoots an arrow that splits an apple atop his son's head, has been directed by Damiano Michieletto and stars Canadian baritone Gerald Finley as Tell and
American tenor John Osborn.


Osborn told Reuters after the performance that the scene "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.


"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."

The Stage gave the production one star. George Hall called it a "dire evening" in which the "gratuitous gang-rape" scene provoked "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", he said.

Michael Arditti, the Sunday Express theatre critic said the production represented a "new nadir" for the opera house and "heads should roll".