After first painfully working his way up the winding staircase, the sick man was suddenly felled by a heart attack. Twisting and turning, he tumbled back down the steps.

The audience, of which I was a member, looked on in horror. Even if this dramatic action took place in an opera, the fall was done so realistically that we could only gasp.

The singer who managed this feat is Ryan Allen. He was playing the role of Horace in Marc Blitzstein’s 1949 opera Regina, based on Lillian Hellman’s play (and subsequent film) The Little Foxes.

The opera was performed by the Des Moines Metro Opera where, by custom, audience members get the opportunity to speak to the singers in the lobby just after the show. When I approached this singer, I wanted to ask him how he pulled off his fall without injuring himself.

In response, he had no special formula to offer, no secret way of maneuvering his body. Rather, he modestly shrugged as if throwing yourself down a flight of stairs fitted the job description of any opera singer.

Then, prefacing my question, with something of an apology, I asked Ryan Allen how old he was. When he responded, I felt dumfounded. He is 65 years old!

Many other people that age take pains at every step to avoid falling. But this operatic adventurer has seized the opportunity to turn falling into an art form.

Allen keeps in remarkably good condition. Not only does his voice hold its bass timbre, but his physique suggests a man who takes care of himself. Tall and thin, he clearly has remained equipped to take on physical challenges.

A company official who had seen the four previous performances of Regina told me this fall was Allen’s most spectacular. He seemed to throw himself down with more abandon than before.

Asked about this, the singer smilingly suggested that these performances in Des Moines might have been the final ones of his career. It sounds as if Ryan Allen may have sung his last, professionally.

It would signal the end of a distinguished though not celebritous career. Allen made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera in 1993 and performed six seasons with that company. Since then, he has sung with various other opera companies, as well as with symphony orchestras and in musical theater and operetta.

If true, his intention to retire makes me glad to have seen Allen finishing on such a high. Or, given his prostrate form, should I say low?

Despite my longtime credentials as an opera fan, I had never heard of Ryan Allen. But that holds true of many other fine singers across our country. Their talent remains on display in regional companies but that does not make them household names.

The Des Moines Metro Opera company deserves credit for presenting them to audiences from the Iowa region and to visitors like me. The singers presented by DMMO often perform better than the biggest names in the field, thanks to careful preparation and a supportive atmosphere.

This same month, by contrast with Allen, another opera singer, long retired, experienced a fall with disastrous results. Joan Sutherland, who now lives in Switzerland, fell in her own garden. In doing so, she somehow broke both legs.

In suffering such an injury this Australian singer joined a frighteningly large list of causalities by falls.

The numbers for Americans are dismaying. In 2005, nearly 300,000 of us fell and broke our hips (or broke our hips and fell). For one-quarter of these people over 50, the falls led to their deaths within the following year.

Fortunately, some scientists are working to increase our chances of avoiding falls. A news release just now sent out by MIT tells of graduate student Erez Lieberman, who has developed a shoe that reveals balance problems.

Originally, this enterprising student developed the shoe in order to help monitor balance problems in astronauts returning from space. Now he and his student team hope eventually to come up with shoes that warn wearers if they are off-kilter.

Lieberman has taken inspiration in part from the example of his grandmother. Several years ago, she fell and suffered serious injuries.

Now he and his team are testing an insole device with 60 people who serve as his research subjects. The device is programmed to report back to doctors when imbalances are revealed.

Such practical research offers hope for the future. In the meantime, I am hedging my bets by taking care to walk cautiously. The city streets and sidewalks in my urban neighborhood are loaded with hazards that I take as threats to my well-being.

Alas, I will never be able to sing with anything like the vocal skills of Ryan Allen. Nor will I be able to fall with his grace.

But I will continue to take inspiration from his physical fitness and his willingness to engage in artistic activity that involves risk.

Richard Griffin