John Smyth writes:

>Anyway, right in the middle of the opening bassoon solo someone sneezed
>quite an unmuffled sneeze, and that was only the beginning.  It sounded
>like a Moscow apartment house in there.  I spent the rest of the concert
>worrying about who would make the next noise.

Yes, noise during public performances can be disturbing, sometimes even
historic.  Take the noise on the night of April 14, 1865 at Ford's Theater,
in Washington, D.C.  Or perhaps even more noisy, if not as significant, the
night in Vienna, late in 1924 (?) when during a performance of Peer Gynt
at the Burgtheater a Macedonian lady, Mencia Carniciu, a partisan of the
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, pumped several pistol
shots into the head of Todor Panizza an operative for the rival Federalist
Movement.  Mme.  Carniciu at least had the delicacy to pick a particularly
turbulent part of the drama for her obtrusion.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]