Hearing Loss Claim at Royal Opera House

[GridGirl]

The full judgement is here https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/christopher-goldscheider-v-the-royal-opera-house-covent-garden-foundation/

 

The matters of long term exposure and contributory negligence are dealt with in depth.

 

Thanks for this - very interesting reading and in all honesty it makes me feel an awful lot better about what we’re doing to protect our players’ hearing. Sending it on to my boss because he’s going to be very interested in it.

[Brian]

The answer here is to put a HUGE tub of earplugs on a shelf on the stage with a sign that says...

 

Not enough. Above a certain noise level hearing protection is mandatory so 'strongly recommending' doesn't cut it.

[Stuart91]

The answer here is to put a HUGE tub of earplugs on a shelf on the stage with a sign that says...

 

Not enough. Above a certain noise level hearing protection is mandatory so 'strongly recommending' doesn't cut it.

 

One of the news stories claimed that the peak level in front of the brass was 130dB (with no weighting etc. given)

 

Most disposable earplugs are going to attenuate by 20dB or thereabouts, so you will still have a problem.

[timsabre]

He was provided with and was wearing earplugs.

[richardash1981]

The answer here is to put a HUGE tub of earplugs on a shelf on the stage with a sign that says...

 

Not enough. Above a certain noise level hearing protection is mandatory so 'strongly recommending' doesn't cut it.

And this is the primary area where the judge found the employer (Royal Opera House) broke the law - they knew the sound levels where such that action was mandatory (not just that the employer must provide), but that wasn't what they told the players, and they didn't provide the legally required signage. That alone is something which other venues will need to take notice of. Expect blue and white signs in pits and on pit doors!

 

He was provided with and was wearing earplugs.

But not all the time, and players were not obliged to do so (and no attempt was made to enforce wearing them). The judgement at least seems to imply that if the ROH could have shown that they had enforced wearing of hearing protection once their own risk assessment showed they were obliged to (and the judge was not happy with the risk assessment either) their case would have been stronger.

 

To address the question about pinning down to one rehearsal, the claim is unusual in that it is not for hearing loss in the conventional sense, but for the reverse - an abnormal over-sensitivity to sounds, and resultant nausea and balance problems. The pinning down is a combination of the sudden onset of symptoms after the rehearsal in question, and the medical evidence of the sort of exposure leading to the diagnosed condition. In that sense this is an unusual case (there is stated to be no previous case in the music sector), although it has exposed a wider failure to comply with the law on noise protection (which was put into place to avoid long term hearing damage).

 

What this does flag up is the fact that the law on noise (and a large part of the medical evidence) is based on industrial exposure to continuous noise, with some rather tenuous extension to varying and short-duration noises. I have read elsewhere of concerns that those shooting guns (for sport or training) may be more at risk than they realise by virtue of the very short duration but very large amplitude of the noises, and a similar issue exists with electrical sparks (flashovers).

[Junior8]

OOOO that's interesting, it may cause a few problems in the industry.

If you read the whole thread then it shows that it shouldn't be any trouble if you do things correctly. We still don't know what the outcome will be and he may just be given representative damages of a nominal amount because of his own contributory actions.

 

Not just sitting right in front of a Wagnerian brass section but possible cumulative damage from over-rehearsing his own instrument for years and playing in heavily amplified, large scale events.

 

 

The judge is quite clear in rejecting any cumulative effect and finds, based on medical records and the like, that the hearing damage was linked to this one rehearsal. I would urge anybody in a managerial position to read this judgement in full if only to understand how their own actions might be examined in such a case. For example in one paragraph she deals with the notion that players might be left to decide when to use protection she says in relation to the point made in the last post:

 

I find that the ROH did not inform the claimant, nor it would appear other orchestra players, of the mandatory requirement to wear hearing protection when the noise was likely to be above the upper EAV. It is not enough to leave the issue to the musicians to judge for themselves, they should have been informed of the strict requirement and the need for it, an instruction which should have been replicated in signage in and around the orchestra pit at the time of the rehearsal on 1 September 2012. For these reasons I find that there is a breach of Regulation 10(1).

 

Edited March 29, 2018 by Junior8

[GridGirl]

The answer here is to put a HUGE tub of earplugs on a shelf on the stage with a sign that says...

 

Not enough. Above a certain noise level hearing protection is mandatory so 'strongly recommending' doesn't cut it.

 

One of the news stories claimed that the peak level in front of the brass was 130dB (with no weighting etc. given)

 

Most disposable earplugs are going to attenuate by 20dB or thereabouts, so you will still have a problem.

 

That’s peak level though - here in Australia the max allowable peak is 140dbC so it’s still under that. We occasionally see peaks that high (although from percussion not brass) and it’s still perfectly legal.

[bigclive]

So, on the basis that orchestras are basically very, very loud and that the performers need to be able to hear their own instrument, what can one actually do? It's a bit like a DJ suing for hearing loss.

[david.elsbury]

Clearly it’s time to ban orchestras on H&S grounds.

[bigclive]

Clearly it’s time to ban orchestras on H&S grounds.

 

If all the performers start making claims it will be them who are ending orchestras.

 

It'll all be synthesised or studio recorded orchestra work after that.

[GridGirl]

So, on the basis that orchestras are basically very, very loud and that the performers need to be able to hear their own instrument, what can one actually do? It's a bit like a DJ suing for hearing loss.

 

This is what we’re all struggling with. We’re having some good success with electronic earplugs (which I’ve mentioned here before) but they’re not perfect. I think technology will eventually catch up but we’re not quite there yet.

 

Clearly it’s time to ban orchestras on H&S grounds.

 

If all the performers start making claims it will be them who are ending orchestras.

 

It'll all be synthesised or studio recorded orchestra work after that.

 

This particular case, to be fair, is pretty extreme. I’ve been in my current job for a little over seven years and despite our awful pit, we’ve never had an episode like this one. I have seen one case of acoustic shock (a colleague and I pretty much carried the player out of the pit as he was so physically affected that he couldn’t walk and his vision was affected) but it was much less severe and after a month or so off, the musician was fine. However all our players know that if they are having a problem, they GET OUT OF THE PIT AND COME AND FIND US IMMEDIATELY. This is what is totally boggling me in this case; I would have thought, given the description of the pit setup, the player would have realised after two minutes that it was going to be problematic and gone to tell someone - Valkyrie doesn’t ease you in gradually so I cannot understand why he stayed in the pit to the point where the hearing injury happened. All our music stands have a full A4 sheet about hearing conservation and what to do in particular situations attached to them, and pretty much the first thing on the page is “you are within your rights to leave the pit at any time if you are finding the sound levels too much.” Words to that effect, anyway.

 

I personally think that a lot of the issues are due to modern instruments. Brass instruments in particular are much easier to play at high volumes than they used to be when a lot of these works were written. While those practically earth-shattering moments in Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty will always have been loud, the instruments that Tchaikovsky would have written for wouldn’t have been capable of the same levels as today’s are. So we mark dynamics down in the parts where necessary, and I should say that our brass players are exceptionally good at moderating their sound output where they have to. It does also come down to conductors being aware that sometimes they can’t get exactly what they want from the orchestra and they have to deal with that. Some are better than others about this!

[richardash1981]

I personally think that a lot of the issues are due to modern instruments. Brass instruments in particular are much easier to play at high volumes than they used to be when a lot of these works were written. While those practically earth-shattering moments in Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty will always have been loud, the instruments that Tchaikovsky would have written for wouldn't have been capable of the same levels as today's are. So we mark dynamics down in the parts where necessary, and I should say that our brass players are exceptionally good at moderating their sound output where they have to. It does also come down to conductors being aware that sometimes they can't get exactly what they want from the orchestra and they have to deal with that. Some are better than others about this!

 

I think there is a lot in that. I'm not involved with professional orchestras, but even in amateur brass bands instruments have become much more powerful. There is a group (I think in the USA) which performs the late 19th / early 20th Century repertoire on original on replica instruments. From recordings I have heard the most obvious difference is in the balance and timbre of the ensemble, but I suspect they were also significantly quieter! This is not of course a new trend - string instruments have been for a couple of centuries "uprated" by adjusting the weight and tension of the strings, bridge height and so on. This seems to be well acknowledged for the 18th Century and before (where use of replica period instruments is now widespread - and they are a lot quieter!), but the romantic / symphony orchestras have not really taken on board that the same trends continued through the 19th and 20th centuries, and most of what is now considered "traditional" is much more recent than the repertoire they play (with strings it tends to be vibrato used to make this point).

 

There is also (it seems) a particular problem with orchestral pits, and (at least in the case of the Royal Opera House) trying to play music written well after the architecture was designed, without accepting the compromises that leads to. Sydney doesn't have that excuse ...

[kerry davies]

Among others Conn actually market brass on resonance and projection more than on tone. When US marching bands have 10 sousaphones and are playing to football crowds of 100,000 of course volume is primary.

 

Interestingly enough Wagner designed his own opera house at Bayreuth to reduce orchestral volume by sinking the pit below the stage and covering over three quarters of it. It also, fascinatingly, has levels down to 2.5/3M below stage where they site the brass with the strings higher up. His idea was that the actor/singers were the focus and keeping the musicians out of sight and lowering their sound levels concentrated audience attention where he wanted. Audiences back then were also smaller, under 2,000 at Bayreuth, so they could be "blasted" at far lower volumes.

 

Amplification of singers also forces orchestras and conductors to raise levels hugely so the solution might end up as a sort of "silent disco" effect where the audience all have headphones which they can deafen themselves with while the noise generators can play at safe levels.

 

E2A. When the PSA was involved in talking to government about the introduction of NAW 2005 to the live music sector, which we were exempt from until 2008, the lead consultant from the industry side was a representative of the BBC symphony orchestra. That led to some fascinatingly bonkers ideas but it meant that the classical sector led on this subject and I cannot believe that RoH did not, at that time at least, have systems in place.

 

The HSE "Sound Advice" website appears to still be up and running and the ABO website has a section on noise at work. (If you are a member!)

Edited April 1, 2018 by kerry davies

[GridGirl]

Amplification of singers also forces orchestras and conductors to raise levels hugely so the solution might end up as a sort of "silent disco" effect where the audience all have headphones which they can deafen themselves with while the noise generators can play at safe levels.

 

Doesn’t make a blind bit of difference in the opera world though - we only ever amplify a) Opera on Sydney Harbour, where we don’t generally have the noise concerns that occur in our pit, due to the orchestra studio being not completely enclosed (the walls never go to the roof!), and copious amounts of acoustic blanketing which can be used because the orchestra is mic’ed as well so balance is managed by the sound engineer, not the players; and b) musical theatre seasons. We run a much smaller orchestra during the musicals, which of course means everyone has more space and we can separate the noisy instruments better, make sure there’s a “buffer zone” between noisy instruments and those in front of them, and put in baffling and headshields without obstructing people’s view of the conductor.

 

And we’ve done the “silent disco” - late 2016 when we did Sydney Opera House: The Opera, otherwise known as The Eighth Wonder, it was presented on the steps of the SOH itself. Orchestra was in one of the smaller venues in the building (the Studio) and singers were of course mic’ed. Our amazing sound designer decided instead of speakers, he’d give every audience member a pair of headphones (with a radio receiver). It also got around the problem of people who live in the very expensive apartments on Circular Quay complaining about the noise, like the do for all the forecourt concerts. I didn’t see the show, being busy minding the orchestra, but apparently it worked really well.

[Junior8]

I think there is a lot in that. I'm not involved with professional orchestras, but even in amateur brass bands instruments have become much more powerful. There is a group (I think in the USA) which performs the late 19th / early 20th Century repertoire on original on replica instruments. From recordings I have heard the most obvious difference is in the balance and timbre of the ensemble, but I suspect they were also significantly quieter! This is not of course a new trend - string instruments have been for a couple of centuries "uprated" by adjusting the weight and tension of the strings, bridge height and so on. This seems to be well acknowledged for the 18th Century and before (where use of replica period instruments is now widespread - and they are a lot quieter!), but the romantic / symphony orchestras have not really taken on board that the same trends continued through the 19th and 20th centuries, and most of what is now considered "traditional" is much more recent than the repertoire they play (with strings it tends to be vibrato used to make this point).

 

There is also (it seems) a particular problem with orchestral pits, and (at least in the case of the Royal Opera House) trying to play music written well after the architecture was designed, without accepting the compromises that leads to. Sydney doesn't have that excuse ...

 

When the period instrument movement got into its stride I think many of us were amazed that such ensembles made really a very small sound but on reflection it must have been thus. The traditional Harpsichord is a relatively quiet instrument but the music of the time depended on the continuo being heard against the rest of the ensemble. On brass I had to leave an outdoor event when I was seated directly in front of the brass section - it was unbearable, mind you it was also unmusical.

 

But then everything is getting louder it seems to me - and not for the good. At the same time as the period instrument bandwagon got rolling a few recording companies went back to recording orchestras out of the studio in few takes with just a crossed stereo pair, Blumlein style. Compared with more 'produced' recordings of the established labels the difference was stark - and it should have made more people think about the artificiality of what is so often produced these days. Often it seems to me if the dynamic range of a performance doesn't match what listeners can achieve in their living room and especially the lack of low frequencies ensembles are miked and the sound reinforced. I had a good example of this back in the seventies when I was at a concert by Stephanne Grapelli and the Diz Disley Trio. Halfway through the PA went down and without a break they just went on and adjusted the volume of their playing. It was obvious I had until then not been listening to the performers but the tin eared dumbo at the sound desk's idea of what the performers should sound like. One also recalls the lessons of Gilbert Briggs' fifties concerts of live and recorded music - one featuring Thurston Dart.

 

I think Kerry is right - there has been a sort of leapfrog effect in all this in live performance so now we are all pinned against the back wall by digital sound of painful purity but when you think about it there is something quite ludicrous in having to provide musicians with earplugs. (In Wagner they should be issued to the audience of course.)