Perhaps the most famous kiss in opera, when the temptress witch Kundry seduces the know-nothing hero of Richard Wagner's Parsifal, went off without a hitch in a close-up shot for a global live transmission from the Royal Opera House in London.
Then came the glitch.
"Where is the follow spot?" exasperated live transmission director Jonathan Haswell, monitoring the outgoing feed in a studio deep in the bowels of the opera house, grumbled to his small crew hunched over vision mixers and a Parsifal score.
Spotlights above the stage had failed to come on instantly to track New Zealand-born tenor Simon O'Neill and German soprano Angela Denoke disengaging from one another.
They flicked on within seconds and it is unlikely that many in the Covent Garden audience earlier this month, or in the cinemas in 28 countries where the Royal Opera screened the transmission, noticed much, if anything, amiss.
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