Opera audiences pride themselves on knowing when – and how – to make noise. Hetherington may also take comfort from booing’s long history in opera, although audiences in Britain are generally much more restrained than in Italy, said the opera historian Flora Willson. “Opera seems to provoke more vocal reactions than spoken theatre or musicals, but mostly booing is directed at opera singers, whose job it is to perform frankly astonishing athletic feats on a nightly basis,” she said. Willson compared the way audiences respond to opera singers to football. But while a few isolated boos don’t affect the success of a show, Berry said he always found booing singers “distasteful”, especially when social media has given audiences the tools to vent their dissatisfaction.