Opera singing is becoming increasingly perilous

Bravo to the soprano who fell off stage

I have often written about the beautiful spinto voiced Ana Maria Martinez. She's the one with the beautiful pianissimi con morbidi...well she recently got her feet tangled up in some netting around Rusalka's lake and twisted up and fell in the orchestra pit damaging a 100000 lire cello as per the UK Mirror. Ana María Martínez' tumble into the orchestra pit at Glyndebourne shows that opera singing is becoming increasingly perilous

It's cruel to put it thus, but it must have been quite a sight: on Friday, the entirely delightful soprano Ana María Martínez, singing the title role in Rusalka at Glyndebourne, lost her footing during a duet towards the end of act one and fell head first into the pit, breaking her fall on an unfortunate cellist. According to one eyewitness, describing the incident in a blog for the Economist: "The cry went up for a doctor, and for several minutes the wonderful and unfortunate singer didn't seem to move. After a panicked pause the audience was ushered out. Its members stood around awkwardly in the bar, wondering whether it would be improper to drink the Pimm's they had pre-ordered for the interval." Mercifully the Puerto Rican Martínez is now in fine fettle, though her understudy took on the role for the rest of the evening. The same cannot be said for the cello, which requires repairs.

Martínez's tumble is not surprising, for life on the operatic stage is increasingly perilous. No longer required simply to stand in the centre of the stage and exercise their lungs, opera singers are now expected to be multitalented actors, dancers, even acrobats; and to negotiate more and more elaborate sets for the entertainment of the audience. In Rusalka, the least dangerous thing Martínez did was to sing a duet on the edge of a stage, given that she also spent some time airborne on wires mimicking the aquatic existence of Dvorák's water nymph. Last year, at a performance of Peter Eötvös's Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne, I and the rest of a horrified audience watched as one of Jean Rigby's finger was crushed beneath a large scaffolding cage. It was the anguished howls of audience members that stopped the performance. She gamely reappeared – with a bandage.

Last month, American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato slipped and fell during a performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Royal Opera House. She carried on, valiantly, it turns out, since she had in fact broken her fibula just above the ankle. Later performances saw her variously in a wheelchair and hobbling in her cast. And back in 2002 Simon Keenlyside, the British baritone – known for his athletic, energetic performances – came a cropper during rehearsals at Covent Garden for Die Zauberflöte. Reportedly taking a fall through a trapdoor (ouch) he injured an arm so badly he needed surgery. Papageno the birdcatcher wore an unpremeditated sling for that production.

Keenlyside has juggled on stage; I've seen Matthias Goerne submerged in a tank of water (though not, amazingly, required to sing at the same time). In Glyndebourne's production of Giulio Cesare, I've seen Australian soprano Danielle de Niese perform an expert belly dance and this summer, Jonas Kaufmann built a house on stage in Munich for his debut role as Lohengrin. Divas? I don't think so. This lot are heroes.