The Curse of Loud Whooping - Peter Whittle on Radio 4's Front Row

When Connie Fisher takes her bow at the opening of The Sound of Music next month, she can be sure that that is the sound she will hear. Whether the show is good, bad or plain indifferent, she’ll be greeted not just with thunderous applause and cheering, but with the sound of a massive pack of whooping hyenas creeping towards her from beyond the lights.

But as she should remember that this ear-splitting demonstration of appreciation is not necessarily for her. Far from it. Now, in the narcissistic spirit of our age, it seems that the only way in which an audience can truly congratulate a performer is by drawing attention away from the stage and firmly onto itself.

Whether it is in the theatre, or increasingly at the ballet or opera, ear-splitting whoops, which have in all likelihood been practised and prepared for silently in the closing minutes of the last number, grande jete or aria, have become the audience’s own special way of putting itself firmly under the spotlight.

It’s not simply that good old-fashioned clapping and cheering is no longer adequate when it comes to showing your approval. We haven’t, after all, suddenly arrived in an era when artistic expression is so transcendentally perfect as to render the traditional ways obsolete. After all, Nijinsky, Callas and, perhaps, Julie Andrews herself reached legendary status on waves of communal clapping and cheers.

No, it is perhaps that these simple, tried and trusted methods are just too, well, altruistic for our self-absorbed times. Far too many of us, even when it comes to expressing our approval of others, have to be saying something about ourselves. And this is what grates with those of us who resolutely cling to the old ways: there is something so egotistical, so essentially thick-headed, about whoopers.

As the curtain comes down, you can almost sense them getting ready next to you. Even those who’ve shown every sign of utter boredom during the performance – regularly checking their mobile phones perhaps, or, heaven help us, slipping off into a light doze – even these manage to rally themselves enough to whoop like an audience being warmed up for a TV game show.

It’s not simply another crack at the Great Satan to point out that, yes, whooping is yet another import from across the Atlantic, like Trick or Treating, or ordering food ‘to go’. The practise has been established long enough in America for the New Yorker critic Arlene Croce to bemoan its first appearance there many years ago. ‘Is it another mark of the Me Generation?’ she asked. ‘All the traditional audience vocables – Bravo, Oles – say ‘You were wonderful’; they’re directed at the performer. These woodless woofs say, ‘I’m wiped out.’


She was right of course. Whooping makes the self-centred feel part of the artistic process. You’ve had your moment, they seem to be saying, now I’ll have mine.

Of course, as anti-social behaviour goes, this is hardly Asbo material. But then neither is queue-jumping, or using train seats as foot rests. It’s not a problem which is going to make Panorama. What it is however is just another nasty little practise which, while flying well under the radar of arrestable offence, impoverishes our experience of public events.

So please, let’s turn over a new leaf on Connie’s first night. Think before you whoop, and rediscover that wonderful warm feeling which comes from doing something for somebody else.

A Blight on the Opera

Europe’s latest piece of cringing cultural appeasement has come not from politicians but the heart of the artistic establishment itself. The world famous Deutsche Oper in Berlin has cancelled performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo for fear of causing offence and unrest. As is reported in The Times today, the decision has caused outrage amongst politicians and commentators in Germany.

The scene in the opera which was apparently causing particular anxiety was that in which the King of Crete holds aloft the decapitated heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and the Prophet Muhammad and cries ‘The gods are dead!’ Presumably with the Pope’s recent comments in mind, a spokesman for Deutsche Oper said yesterday that putting on Idomeneo would ‘represent an incalculable security risk for the theatre at present.’ They made this announcement after having received a police report advising that ‘disturbances could not be excluded’ during performances of the opera.

Politicians across the spectrum have at least had the guts to condemn such craven behaviour, speaking out against the threat to freedom of expression which is all too real and of which this is just the latest example. As the Times reports, Peter Ramsauer, head of the conservative Christian Social Union parliamentary faction, said: ‘It is an act of pure cowardice. We are opening ourselves up to cultural blackmail.’

Yet again the European cultural elites, who profess to value artistic freedom above all else, are demonstrating their utter weakness when it comes to actually defending the liberal values they supposedly hold so dear. Perhaps this is to be expected when one considers the ingrained self-hatred and collapse of confidence which characterises so much of contemporary European culture – one which increasingly defines itself purely on the basis of hostility to America.

But what is especially worrying about this episode is that the self-censoring involves an established classic. Does this mean that, along with the self-imposed ban on any new cultural depictions of any aspect of Islam (which is effectively in place and which amounts to a form of unofficial sharia law), Europe will now look carefully at every aspect of its cultural heritage before displaying it?

Peter Whittle