Pikovaja Dama

Never heard an opera audience gasp with anticipation at what was going to happen next.
Just minutes into the first scene a little girl loses her prop -a heavy looking leather trimmed ball- and it starts to roll at an excruciatingly slow pace toward the orchestra pit. She is reluctant to recover the object.
Eagerly the audience await the fall of the object unto a member of the symphonic clique residing below. And just as the leather orb decides to jield to the forces of gravity a communial breath is drawn -hardly inaudible- and then ... exhaled as a black cargo net prohibits the malicious pleasure object from fulfilling it's anticipatory flash of excitement.
Even ex NATO secretary general Willy Claes, who attended the matinee, probably heard the ball roll because he wasn't wearing glasses.