Daily Mail

Quiet at the opera

England hockey star ‘is thrown out of audience for coughing just twice’

- By Chris Brooke

THE ring tone of a phone has been known to send performers on stage into a rage.

But Olympic gold medallist Samantha Quek claims she was ‘asked to leave’ an opera simply for coughing twice.

The 30-year- old tweeted about the incident during a visit to Vienna this week. She is believed to have attended Monday’s performanc­e at the Vienna State Opera and described being sent to a ‘ detention room’ to watch the show on a TV screen instead.

Her light-hearted social media post has prompted a debate about stuffy opera rules. Soprano Laura Wright commented: ‘And that’s why more people don’t listen to opera! #coughawayb­abe.’

Miss Quek, who became famous through her 2016 appearance on the ITV show I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!, has 110,000 followers on Twitter and her comments have prompted an investigat­ion by the historic opera theatre’s management team.

She posted a couple of photos and told followers: ‘ Just been asked to leave my seat at the opera because I coughed twice. Now I’ve been escorted to some random detention room along with a couple of drunks.’

The room pictured is called the ‘galerie’ and is typically used by people who arrive late and have to wait until the interval to be let inside. The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden is said to use a similar system so performers and members of the audience do not get disturbed.

The performanc­e on Monday was the tragic opera Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti. It is not known how much of it Miss Quek, a member of the winning British hockey team at Rio in 2016, missed by being sent outside. However, a spokesman for the Vienna State Opera said they had been unable to confirm any details of the reported incident after speaking to staff. He insisted no staff would ask anyone to leave for coughing a few times and no one working remembered any such incident.

The spokesman said staff were also not inside the audi- torium during the performanc­es. ‘None of the staff noticed anything,’ he said. ‘The only thing I can think of is maybe a neighbour sitting next to her asked her to leave because her coughing was too loud.

‘Nobody will have asked her to leave because of coughing two times, three times or even four times.’

He said the opera house had attempted to contact Miss Quek about the incident without success. And a mischievou­s Instagram post the following day suggested the Olympic medallist was enjoying causing a stir in the Austrian capital. Next to a photo of her in an art gallery she commented: ‘If you ever want to see a museum security guard absolutely c**p themselves, stand a little too close to an original Claude Monet water lily painting and look like you are about to sneeze.’

‘Escorted to detention room’

 ??  ?? Sour note: Gold medal winner Samantha Quek had to watch the show on a TV
Sour note: Gold medal winner Samantha Quek had to watch the show on a TV
 ??  ?? Investigat­ion: The Vienna State Opera
Investigat­ion: The Vienna State Opera

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