It's one of those all-too-often days when life is spinning out of control, so I head to the PPG Wintergarden, one of my favorite places in Pittsburgh, sip some coffee and stare at the towering glass plates

above me. I think that if architects somehow can make that building stand, things certainly can be worked out in my little basket of travails.

But on this afternoon, I'm not so comforted by PPG's house of glass. My voice teacher is holding the annual recital for her students, and I'll be one of the last to sing. While I listen to the other performances, I am struck by the silence of the crowd, the resonance of the space and the fact that every sound is enhanced a million times.

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A few days before, I had spent the evening at the Pittsburgh Opera watching the epic "Aida." The opera had as much drama off-stage as on-stage that night, with a succession of back-up performers filling in for ailing leads. I, too, had succumbed to illness earlier that week and had traded in my usual opening-night seat to attend a later performance.

I've been singing in public for more than 20 years, so I like to sit close at the opera and observe the performers from my 10th-row seat. I examine their vocal techniques, posture and breathing, and I sometimes close my eyes and just listen to the sound. Mezzo-soprano Renee Fleming calls operatic singing "controlled screaming" in her book "The Inner Voice." It takes years of daily practice to achieve operatic greatness, and I relish every note.

On this night, it was hard to relish anything thanks to the chattering, whispering couple sitting directly behind me who coughed, coughed, coughed so forcefully that the wind blew through my hair. In between their mucous-filled, tuberculosis-like exclamations, the chorus of coughing from the rest of the audience rang out like oboes rising high above an orchestra. At one point, the tenor's beautiful aria ended on the clipped sound of a single cough.

At the first intermission, I had had enough. As I was leaving, the kind patron to my left asked why. I replied that it was impossible for me to enjoy the opera and that I found it so disrespectful of anyone who would attend a performance when so obviously ill and so likely to disturb others. I headed home. I was really mad. It was a very expensive ticket.

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Pittsburgh audiences are a strange lot. The event doesn't matter; there's always a militant contingent that makes a run for the door 10 minutes before it's about to end.

PNC Park, bottom of the ninth, Pirates winning and it's the final out. Streams of people make their way out of the stands like fish swimming upstream.

Heinz Field, fourth quarter, Steelers have five minutes left in regulation play, same deal.

Pop concerts; they head for the door before the encore.

The Pittsburgh Symphony takes the cake. Patrons attend either the first or the second half -- it seems as though the only people who stay for entire concerts also attend the opera, making their own (cough, cough) kind of music.

Why? Is the baby-sitter going to charge a buck-a-minute for overtime? Is it the traffic? -- Pittsburgh is one of the least congested cities in the country.

Maybe I'm strange, but I want to enjoy the last strains of music, the last crack of the bat, to linger a moment longer and savor the experience, to forget that I have to take the trash out when I get home.

One group that seems immune to bad manners is the singer-songwriter/country-music crowd. I recently saw this in action at the Carnegie Library Music Hall in Homestead when Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin and Buddy Miller performed in the round on Jan. 25.

The venue has surfaces hard enough to amplify a pin drop. The performers, with their acoustic guitars and hand percussion instruments, sang and harmonized for almost two perfect hours. The audience was rapt. Maybe everyone instinctively knew that it was a magical night.

I've been to more songwriter circles than I can count -- as a performer and an observer -- and if you start chatting, someone will most assuredly ask you not to. People come to listen, to learn and glean some musical or philosophical nugget, to leave a little wiser than they came.

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I'm coming to the conclusion that the more I pay for a ticket, the more bad manners abound, in both disposition and dress. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that when you go to Heinz Hall, you should leave the jeans and jogging gear behind and dress appropriately. You should respect the musicians who have dedicated their lives to bring some excellence into your life.

Even the punk crowd that files into the 31st Street Pub for a show knows this, and it takes a lot of effort to coordinate 10 pairs of earrings with the perfect chain-link spiked belt.

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With the glass cathedral towering above me, and with the recital nearing its end, it's my turn to sing and I'm really nervous. I ditch my original song choice at the last minute and grab a fill-in from my repertoire: "Simple" from the musical "Nine."

An old friend came to see me sing today, and she smiles as I walk on stage, just me and the pianist.

"Simple as the sun, and moon and the stars in the sky," my voice swells as I focus on technique. "Simple are the ways we say, goodbye ..."

I breathe deeply while the audience applauds and I see my friend.

She's crying.

She knows how to listen.