Fistfight Breaks Out at Chicago Symphony
As lovers of classical music we expect a concert to arouse our emotions from time to time. This is normally a reaction to the music; a performance can be so beautiful that we are moved to tears or exhilarated. In my personal experience, however, I have never been enraged by a concert. Maybe I’ve been annoyed with a performer’s mannerisms, but I never felt particularly violent about what they were doing. I never thought a symphony concert would ever arouse those kinds of emotions in an audience member.
This weekend, however, a patron of the Chicago Symphony proved me wrong. In what is being officially described by the orchestra as “an incident between two patrons,” a man of approximately 30 years of age got into a fistfight with a 67-year-old man in a dispute over seating. The offending patron apparently became irate about the unregulated seating procedure in the box section and struck the victim several times. The older man was left with a cut on his forehead while the younger man left the scene before police could arrive.
While all of this was going on, Riccardo Muti gracefully finished the second movement of Brahms’ Second Symphony without giving way to the calamity behind him. Patrons did report, however, a longer than average pause between the second and third movements as well as “dagger eyes” cast towards the offending section of the audience. Nevertheless, the concert continued undeterred, and concert-goers certainly got a little more entertainment than they originally paid for.
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