Citywide Storm Alert Halts Netrebko's Aida at Barcelona's Liceu

Anna Netrebko's Aida at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona came to a halt on Monday night when hundreds of mobile phones went off simultaneously in the auditorium.

The alerts were not the work of inconsiderate audience members. They came from a citywide warning issued by the Guardia Civil, alerting residents to coastal storms battering the Barcelona area. The emergency notification reached every switched-on handset in the house at once, cutting through the performance mid-performance.

Conductor Antonello Manacorda stopped the performance. According to the report, the orchestra fell silent while the theatre dealt with the unprecedented interruption.

Netrebko, the production's leading lady, responded by clowning for the audience for a few minutes — a piece of impromptu stagecraft that drew on the comic instincts rarely required of Aida, the doomed Ethiopian princess at the centre of Verdi's opera. Video of the moment, shared by La Vanguardia on Instagram, shows the interruption rippling through the packed house.

Then the opera resumed.

The incident is a rare instance of an official civil-defence alert directly interfering with a major operatic performance. Theatres have spent two decades waging war on individual ringing phones, house photography and illuminated screens — but a coordinated government warning broadcast to every device in the building at once is a different order of disruption, and one that no curtain speech or pre-show announcement can prevent.

For the Liceu, the moment passed without incident beyond the delay. For Netrebko, it offered an unscheduled display of the stage presence that has kept her at the top of the operatic profession for more than two decades: when the house filled with noise she could not control, she filled it with a performance she could.

As extreme-weather alerts become more frequent across Europe's Mediterranean coast, Barcelona's experience may prove to be less exceptional than it currently appears.