Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

A man who started the evening sitting in the audience for a production of the opera Carmen, ended the night onstage receiving kudos after he replaced a stricken opera singer.

Baritone Ian Vayne had been watching a Monday performance of the Bizet opera at the Landestheater in the city of Linz, Austria, when one of the leads suffered a heart attack in the second act.

"[Vayne] jumped onstage without makeup or costume and, without having warmed up his voice, finished the opera in place of Lauri Vasar," Elisabeth Egger-Mann, a spokesperson for the Landestheater, said on Tuesday.