One of my most vivid memories at the opera didn’t involve a star. Rather, it was the moon. A burning moon. A moon that burst into flames during the premiere performance of Il Trovatore in 2000. Problem was, that ol’ devil moon kept burning for a good five minutes as the curtain fell to shocked silence from the audience. I assume the flames were deliberate on the part of Graham Vick, whose new production this was. I also assume he didn’t mean for them to linger there like a bad omen.

And I assume that Vick didn’t mean for the audience to begin laughing uncontrollably during Act II, when Manrico (Neil Shicoff) walked gingerly (and seemingly terrified of losing his balance) down a ramp that was in the shape of a cross that had fallen dramatically from the wall and landed with a thud on the altar: He could’ve been walking the plank on a pirate ship to his doom for all the audience knew. It didn’t matter. Everyone roared with delight.

And this was Il Trovatore, that notoriously difficult-to-stage opera, whose idiosyncrasies opera lovers acknowledge and forgive. While it wasn’t as hilarious as the performance of it during the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera, this production was also not meant to be funny. Yet it was. Funny sad. And also funny hah-hah. In a horrified, yet gleeful way – for what opera audience doesn’t like to be witness to a spectacular failure?

Opera, with its oversize emotions, entitled directors, monomaniacal divas and passionate fans, inspires great and comic disasters (as well, of course as artistic triumph).

Many books on opera in general include recounts of mishaps through the ages. These can involve animals (you can imagine: think of the parade in Aida, and animals doing what comes naturally) or of outdoor performances where birds – or, in one instance, a stray cat that rubbed against Franco Corelli’s legs during a performance of Carmen at an amphitheater in Verona – ad lib in ways that would have horrified the composer. Perhaps the most aromatic animal story involved the horse used as Grane in Gotterdammerung at Glyndebourne. At one performance, the horse turned its back to the audience and made a fragrant deposit onto the stage. The opera’s conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, breaking the silence that suddenly filled the space, said, “A critic, by God.”

In his delightful book Great Operatic Disasters Hugh Vickers tells of several priceless moments when things spiraled out of control due to misbehaving scenery or simple bad timing. One involved Tosca, in a production at City Center in New York 50 years ago. At the end of this great melodrama, Tosca throws herself off the ramparts of the Castel Sant’Angelo.

The soprano singing the role usually lands on a mattress a few feet below. Here, though, the stout soprano who sang the title role jumped from the castle onto a trampoline.

Yes, you guessed it: Tosca came flying back up a moment later. Not quite dead – but, as it were, floating in a sort of operatic netherworld. And for the soprano, it was the unfortunate gift that kept on giving, like an unwanted fruitcake. She was unable to sing any other performances of Tosca there, because the audience, knowing what had befallen her at the premiere, kept laughing at the prospect of seeing her on the rebound.

Another involved, of course, Wagner. The world of Wagner, sublime and ridiculous at the same time (and few Wagnerians would trade it for the world) is particularly prone to comic mishap. Like the horse doing his business in Gotterdammerung. Now think of Siegfried, poor Siegfried. And we’re not thinking of that potentially risible line, “Das ist kein Mann” when he sees Brünnhilde. This happened earlier in the evening. At one performance in the 1930s, Lauritz Melchior had forged his sword and was about to cleave the anvil on “So schneidet Siegrieds Schwert,” when the anvil fell apart before he even lifted Nothung to it. Oops. Blame the props department.

Blame it again for a performance of Lohengrin at the Met, in the late 1930s, when Lohengrin – Melchior again, who must have had attracted a lot of bad luck in his day – looks for the hidden sword to attack the evil Telramund, but finds nothing. Rising to the occasion, Melchior instead popped Telramund on the aw with a left hook. Nice.

We live for transcendence in opera, not trickery. Nevertheless, who doesn’t relish reliving an unintentionally comic occurrence at this most wonderful of art forms? Opera can take it.