So many of the operatic mishaps have passed from one story-teller to another that I have on occasion been told coldly, when relating one of my own personal experiences, that this event took place somewhere else and in another opera. I can only say that I have no need of "set pieces"; if I tell a story then I was there! A particular example of this "Russian Scandal" effect concerns a night on tour in Manchester in the fifties (most disasters seemed to happen on tour) when, the pit being too small to seat the full orchestra for "Aïda", we had to open the door under the stage and overflow into the passage. As the Radames called pathetically in the last scene in the tomb: "Aïda, where are thou?" he was answered by a rusty clanking and flushing from the stage hands' lavatory which could be clearly heard in the auditorium and was greeted by a roar of laughter.