At American Ballet Theater's gala in May, John Karls was remarkably poised, betraying no sign of pre-performance jitters. But then Mr. Karls is a seasoned performer, a cool veteran of countless opening nights at many of the world's best houses, including what he calls the "big four": La Scala, the Vienna Staatsoper, Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera House. He knows he will hit his mark. Give or take three feet.
Mr. Karls is a tosser. And while he has never personally graced any of those venerable stages, his bouquets have. Hundreds of them. Mr. Karls, 62, started going to operas and ballets and throwing bouquets to his favorite performers at the age of 9, when other boys were throwing to first. He has attended upward of 2,500 performances and tossed some 750 bouquets in a career spanning more than half a century. Such numbers must place the publicity-shy Mr. Karls (he declined to be photographed or interviewed for this article) among the world's elite tossers.
"It's not a job, its a hobby," Mr. Karls recently told me when I ran into him at a New York City Ballet performance. And an expensive one. The front-row orchestra seats that he covets cost $200 or more at the major houses, $500 in Japan. Then there is the travel. An investment banker by day, with homes in Utah and Austria, Mr. Karls often combines a toss with a business trip, but he'll make a special trip anywhere around the globe for one of his favorites. In October 1999, he flew to Vienna to toss for Simone Young, who was conducting Wagner's ``Ring'' cycle, and then flew to Chicago for the soprano Natalie Dessay, who was making her debut at Chicago's Lyric Opera the next night. The following day he returned to Vienna to toss for Ms. Young's performance in the final opera in the "Ring" cycle.
And then there are the flowers: always roses, always red, usually 18 (two dozen for extra special occasions), long-stemmed, no thorns, baby's breath, lemon leaves, fern fronds, wrapped in red ribbon; average cost: $100. Nacho Reyes is the only person at Ethan's Garden, a Manhattan florist, entrusted to prepare Mr. Karls's bouquets to his specifications, including instructions on aerodynamic wrapping. It also helps to cultivate relations with the staff at a restaurant near the theater, so they'll let you keep your bouquet in the fridge until last intermission, as they do for Mr. Karls at Bertorelli's, across from Covent Garden.
Despite his awkward comb-over of shoe polish-black hair, Mr. Karls cuts a dapper figure in his immaculately tailored suits and sport coats. He's also athletic, cross-training for tossing with recreational tennis, squash, golf and swimming. After all, speed and accuracy are essential. Bouquet tossing can get competitive, with numerous tossers turning out for a big performance. Mr. Karls takes great pride in having his bouquet hit the stage first, and accurately: "Fifteen of my 16 bouquets around the world last season landed within three feet of the spot where they were aimed," he boasted in a 1997 letter to the Met Orchestra.
Some of his targets do get a bit skittish around flying flowers; but he tips them off by sending a bottle of Dom Perignon backstage, letting them know they should "keep an eye out" for a bouquet.
Mr. Karls uses a two-handed toss not unlike that of a hammer thrower. In bouquet tossing, weight is not an issue: the flowers only weigh 2 pounds 12 ounces. The real issue is wind resistance: the cellophane wrap can cause significant drag and can make a bouquet do what Mr. Karls calls a "dying duck" over the orchestra pit. With pits measuring 20 feet or more across, a successful toss requires a clear back swing, a clean release and a surprising amount of oomph.
Six years ago, Mr. Karls thought the time had come for his son to start his own tossing career. The son, 17 and quite athletic, underestimated the distance involved at the Met: his bouquet fell short of the stage and hit the principal bassoon. The bassoonist was unhurt and accepted the gracious apologies of both father and son. But another orchestra member shouted his displeasure not only at the Karlses, but at the soprano for whom the bouquet was intended. Not to be out-diva'd on her own stage, least of all from the pit, she then launched her own tirade at Karls pere, making it clear that she didn't appreciate his saying it with flowers. It was "the worst 180 seconds of my life," wrote Mr. Karls in his letter to the Met. As if the chewing-out weren't enough, the soprano's lawyers sent a "cease and desist" letter to Mr. Karls.
So is tossing a tort? That depends on whether the act would be regarded as harmful or offensive by a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities, says Mark Geistfeld, a torts professor at New York University Law School. Is there a separate "reasonable soprano" standard in the law, a diva distinction? Mr. Geistfeld says no. And could tossing cross the line into stalking? "Stalking is generally characterized by persistent, uninvited attention, with some harm or risk of harm attached," says James Liebman, a professor of criminal law at Columbia University. Hitting someone with a bouquet could be battery, he adds, but like baseball fans who risk or even welcome foul balls, divas and pit musicians probably give implied consent to bouquets being tossed their way.
The potential for injury is enough of a concern that when Covent Garden reopened in 1999, Michael Kaiser, the general manager, began to enforce a "no tossing" policy. This break with long-standing tradition left Mr. Karls apoplectic. He offered to cover the entire pit with protective netting to shield orchestra players from any incoming bouquets, but Covent Garden turned him down.
He then wrote a five-page, single-spaced letter to Covent Garden (with seven attachments), followed by a six-page letter (with four attachments), making his case for lifting the ban. Taking a tape measure to the Covent Garden pit, Mr. Karls determined that protective netting already covered the rear 11 feet, leaving 8 feet exposed at the front. "It seems incredible to me," he wrote, "that someone trying to toss a bouquet 19 feet could not manage a toss of 66 inches, assuming a 30-inch reach before release." But then not all tossers are John Karls.
So why not just leave the flowers at the stage door? "I have always been a volunteer claque for the divas I admire," Mr. Karls explained in the first Covent Garden letter. "It is tragic when a superlative performance goes by unrecognized ... a bouquet caught in the spotlights is a signal that it is O.K. to applaud and cheer enthusiastically," that the audience has "just witnessed something exceptional."
In addition to the power to influence an audience, Mr. Karls thrives on the attention that his bouquets earn him from some of the world's top performers, even if it's just a wink or a smile from the stage. He said he has cultivated a friendship with one favored diva (he wouldn't say which) but largely keeps his distance from the rest, if following 10 to 12 women around the world with champagne and roses can be considered keeping one's distance. Some of Mr. Karls's fellow balletomanes seem to agree with the Covent Garden policy and wish he would stop. Tossing isn't really part of the culture at City Ballet, but in May Mr. Karls tossed for Alexandra Ansanelli at the New York State Theater, for her fine turn in "Afternoon of a Faun." At intermission, an audience member snapped: "He's crazy. He could kill someone!" For her part, Ms. Ansanelli said, "I was thrilled."
As the curtain fell on "Le Grand Pas de Deux" (a spoof ballet) at the Ballet Theater gala, John Karls sprang from his seat. The ravishing Irina Dvorovenko had brought the house down with sparkling fouettes while clenching a pink purse between her teeth. As she took her bows, Mr. Karls tossed his bouquet from his front-row seat, landing it on the lip of the stage, three feet to her right. Nice pitch.