It was nice of the orchestra to keep quiet while the guy was making his call, but trying to talk to him seems kind of rude.

I have a feeling said "not-so-gentleman" will not forget to turn off his phone in the future.

why did the guy bother going to the performance in the first place? I hope they BAN him from the premises forever and put his name on a shit list and circulate to other orchestra's concert halls so they can ban him, too. It is a sin and a crime to interrupt and ruin a performance of Mahler's Ninth!

I'm sure that the phone call was sooo important...

iMRude.

My brother's daughter graduated from college last month, so he and his wife, along with his mother-in-law, attended the commencement ceremony. At the beginning of the ceremony, an announcement was made asking folks to turn off cell phones, pagers, etc., for the duration of the ceremony. My brother had already turned off his phone, but made a quick double check. As he did so, he said to his wife and mother-in-law, "I'll bet you five bucks some idiot won't have done it, and his phone will ring." Sure enough, five minutes into the ceremony, a phone starts ringing, very close by, in fact. Turns out it was his mother-in-law (who promptly panicked and thrust the phone into her daughter's hands).

My brother related this story with what some might say was an unhealthy degree of relish!

pointed him out by yelling 'asshole, asshole' until he left.

to install cell-phone jammers, as is now legal in France.

I keep my phone constantly on silent (not even vibrate) and have had important texts come through at inopportune times. I'm all in favor of jamming ringtones, but don't jam the whole cellphone....unless you let everyone know ahead of time, so those expecting important texts/news can know to avoid the area.

But yes, if your phone makes a noise during a public performance, you should be placed in the stockades.

...back in the mid-Jurassic, pre-cell phone era, when people, if they carried anything at all, carried pagers, the policy at all the Lincoln Center theaters was to request, in most cases, that people not even bring them to the theater. In the cases of doctors, clergypersons or others for whom it was necessary to be constantly reachable, they were asked to leave their pagers with the box office, and the box office would then come and quietly retrieve the person in the event his or her pager went off. I see no reason why they shouldn't do the same with cell phones.

For most of us, I think, the "what if there were an emergency" bit gets seriously overplayed. I mean, seriously, you'd wonder how humanity ever survived without a damn cell phone. More people should discover anew the joys of "unplugging" for a few hours!