Opera as real life...this just in from Ottawa

Opera Lyra patrons at The Magic Flute yesterday witnessed how scary opera can be to real life. The Ottawa Citizen reports:

Quick-thinking patrons at Opera Lyra Ottawa’s performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute Monday helped save a distraught woman who climbed over the railing of one of the boxes at the National Arts Centre.

It happened in a matter of seconds and the performance was not interrupted, but about 10 minutes before the end of the opera, shortly after a character in the opera is contemplating suicide, a woman left her seat in the amphitheatre, entered a box close to the stage and started climbing over the railing, about seven metres above the floor, NAC spokesman Carl Martin said. He said patrons near the woman said she seemed to be trying to call out to one of the characters on stage. A patron in the box held the woman, and patrons in the box below grabbed her and lowered her safely into the lower box.

Read the full article.