One of my favourites is about a snotty opera diva whose high-handed manner made enemies of all the stage hands; and after one too many displays of prima-donna temperament they got their revenge. At the very end of the opera, her character commits dramatic suicide by jumping off a high castle wall, after which the curtain falls. But unfortunately for her, it didn't fall quite soon enough. In backstage reality there was a built-up platform with a soft mattress on it, which was meant to catch her as she landed, having just disappeared forever from sight. But on this particular night the crew removed both platform and mattress, and at ground-level they substituted a trampoline – you can guess the rest. She bounced back into the audience's view so many times that they caught the spirit of the whole caper and started shouting Encore Encore each time she re-appeared. She's meant to have sued the opera company for loss of earnings because after that she could never sing Tosca or any other tragic role again: the minute people thought of her they just started laughing.