Landmark ruling: former ROH viola player vs the ROH

[Lindsay]

They've been doing it since the 90s at least.  We used to meet friends in Cafe des Amis on Hanover Place and during a long run (especially Nutcracker!) the bar staff would know exactly when to start pouring pints in anticipation of a sectional arrival.

[MAB]

16 minutes ago, Lindsay said:

They've been doing it since the 90s at least.  We used to meet friends in Cafe des Amis on Hanover Place and during a long run (especially Nutcracker!) the bar staff would know exactly when to start pouring pints in anticipation of a sectional arrival.

 

For some of us here the 90's are relatively recent

[FLOSS]

In the course of the judgement Pappano is reported as saying that over the last twenty years the playing of opera house orchestras has increased in volume and now they play as loudly as orchestras in the concert hall. I find this more than a little disingenuous. It is as if he is blaming the increase in volume on circumstances beyond his control and that of his fellow conductors. As far as the argument put forward on behalf of the Royal Opera that it is unable to make reasonable adjustments and is forced to sacrifice the well being of the musicians in pursuit of achieving the highest artistic standards in performance.  I don't recall that Haitink,  Pappano's immediate predecessor, Kleiber  or Mackerras  found themselves conducting relentlessly loud volume performances. Perhaps they recognised that as conductors they were in charge of the musical performance. But then in my opinion they seemed to be aiming for subtle musical effects and  achieving a natural balance between stage and pit whereas I often think that Pappano is trying to reproduce what you can hear with a Hifi system on full blast. Just my opinion of  course and you free to proclaim his greatness.

 

I recall some  inept orchestral performances of major ballet scores during the 1970's but the ballet company had some pretty iffy conductors working for it at that time. I always assumed that those appalling musical performances  had far more to do with the contempt in which the orchestra held some of the conductors they had to work with than anything else. I distinctly remember that I was as interested in who was conducting as who was dancing. There were conductors whom I tried to avoid at all costs.

 

 

Musicians who are not required to be present in the pit throughout a  performance have always left the pit when they are not needed. I imagine that members of the brass section welcome the opportunity to wet their whistles. Lilian Baylis is said to have had a backstage bar set up at Sadler's Wells to prevent the musicians spending their money at the pub across the road. 

Edited March 29, 2018 by FLOSS

[LinMM]

I remember seeing certain musicians playing in the Nutcrackers at the Festival Hall ( London Festival Ballet as then called) dashing in at the last minute to start playing their bits!! I suppose in those long runs they just had it all perfectly timed to about the last 30 seconds!! I still thought it very risky and a tad brazen being such a young thing back then but of course there were a lot of temporarily employed musicians for those runs.

[bridiem]

Strange really. Choir members don't rush off when the soloists are singing after all, and that's sometimes for very long periods depending on the work. They just sit patiently and wait (and participate inwardly in the performance). I suppose the difference is that a choir is visible whereas the orchestra isn't (or at least thinks it isn't).

[MissMonk]

Interesting article and law suit. I completely get how he's feeling. I played Tenor Sax for 10 years and sat in front of the trumpets and trombones with the drums just off to the side. This was Middle/High school so of course everyone played as loud as they could. Even now almost 15 years after my last class I have hearing problems. Some sounds (especially whistling) is just so painful, and i get these weird pains inside my ear drum, like a muscle spasm type, and i can't hear certain frequency's which makes listening to people talk awkward.

 

My long winded story is to basically say, he should just suck it up. He knew from the beginning when he chose to be a musician what it entails. The opera house could be more supportive by supplying ear plugs or regular hearing tests or whatever but basically, this law suit is lame and I hope they appeal it.

[ninamargaret]

39 minutes ago, bridiem said:

Strange really. Choir members don't rush off when the soloists are singing after all, and that's sometimes for very long periods depending on the work. They just sit patiently and wait (and participate inwardly in the performance). I suppose the difference is that a choir is visible whereas the orchestra isn't (or at least thinks it isn't).

And orchestral musicians playing in a concert don't do it! 

[Lindsay]

MissMonk - so you think a professional musician who has lost all music from his life,  who struggled to try to get back to work until the medical experts agreed he could no longer  play and who can’t teach because he’s unable to even listen to music should “suck it up”?  You think it’s “lame” to pursue a claim against an employer who had a clear duty under the law to protect his health and who could have done so by assessing the risk properly and taking steps to reduce it?

 

That’s nice

[MAB]

6 minutes ago, Lindsay said:

MissMonk - so you think a professional musician who has lost all music from his life,  who struggled to try to get back to work until the medical experts agreed he could no longer  play and who can’t teach because he’s unable to even listen to music should “suck it up”?  You think it’s “lame” to pursue a claim against an employer who had a clear duty under the law to protect his health and who could have done so by assessing the risk properly and taking steps to reduce it?

 

That’s nice

 

You are deliberately misinterpreting what Miss Monk said.

 

That's not nice.

[Lindsay]

I quoted Miss Monk’s words exactly.  Hence the quotation marks.  The rest of my post is factual and taken from the judgment, a document of public record.  How is that misinterpretation?

[ninamargaret]

Interesting article by Richard Morison in The Times today. He makes the point that modern instruments are made to produce more sound, steel strings are used instead of gut and amplifiers used at events are now of vast capacity. The orchestra Wagner wrote for was a much quieter affair than the one we know now. Several recordings have been made by orchestras using instruments that would have been in use late 19th early 20th century and they do sound different. A good example is the recent recording of Daphnis and Chloe by Francois Xavier Roth and his orchestra Les Siecles.

[FLOSS]

It will be interesting to see what further action the ROH takes in this matter. I imagine that the company has garnered quite a bit of adverse publicity from this case. Appealing the decision could well bring them more. The judge has found that the company has breached the  noise levels permitted by the regulations and it has failed to persuade the judge that it has done all that was reasonably practical to mitigate the noise levels on the pit. Pappano's statement that opera house orchestras have got louder over the last twenty years and now play as loudly as orchestras in the concert hall does not seem to have impressed the judge who visited the locus in quo and found that the pit was pretty crowded when it was required to accommodate the seventy players needed to perform Giselle rather than the ninety needed for Die Walkure. It may well be true that opera house orchestras have the capacity to play far more loudly than they did when Wagner composed the Ring because the string section uses steel strings and the  brass section play instruments with wider bores than were available in the nineteenth century but these are not recent innovations.Orchestras have been using modern instruments for years. At the end of the day it is the conductor who has the final say about where the various sections of the orchestra sit ;determines the balance between them and the volume at which they play the score in front of them. I suspect that if someone tried to argue that the ROH was not at fault because the use of modern Instruments was the cause of the claimant's loss of hearing and it was something the company could not  mitigate the claimant could counter this by saying that the company could provide a safe system of work by adopting the use of period style instruments in the opera house pit. I begin to wonder whether Pappano is himself suffering from hearing loss it might explain why the orchestra plays as it does under his baton.

 

I am afraid that when I read the comment that the viola player should "suck it up" I  took her to mean that she thought that the viola player should live with his hearing loss rather than complaining about it because it was only to be expected if you were an  orchestral player.

Edited March 30, 2018 by FLOSS

[MAB]

1 hour ago, Lindsay said:

I quoted Miss Monk’s words exactly.  Hence the quotation marks.  The rest of my post is factual and taken from the judgment, a document of public record.  How is that misinterpretation?

 

Picking out key words out of context is what hack journalists do in the gutter press, Miss Monk is a musician who was discussing her own hearing impairment, she deserved a sympathetic response and instead received a hostile one.

[Lindsay]

I think you are perhaps misunderstanding the meaning of “out of context” MAB.  That is when quotations imply a different meaning from the author’s original intention.  My quotations retained entirely the meaning of Miss Monk’s comment.  She said the musician in question should “suck it up”.  She said the lawsuit was “lame”.  

 

Playing in a high school orchestra, or even being a professional musician, does not somehow place one above logical debate.   Although I am of course sympathetic to anyone who has suffered hearing loss, I find it surprising that such a person would have no empathy for someone who has suffered an even more serious injury.  I can only surmise that she had not read all the details or understood the extent of the injury and its effects in this case. 

[meadowblythe]

Stayed in a hotel last night where the Viola Suite was more or less adjacent to reception.  The urge to put acoustic barriers around  the doors was almost overwhelming.

[MAB]

22 minutes ago, Lindsay said:

I think you are perhaps misunderstanding the meaning of “out of context” MAB.  That is when quotations imply a different meaning from the author’s original intention.  My quotations retained entirely the meaning of Miss Monk’s comment.  She said the musician in question should “suck it up”.  She said the lawsuit was “lame”.  

 

Playing in a high school orchestra, or even being a professional musician, does not somehow place one above logical debate.   Although I am of course sympathetic to anyone who has suffered hearing loss, I find it surprising that such a person would have no empathy for someone who has suffered an even more serious injury.  I can only surmise that she had not read all the details or understood the extent of the injury and its effects in this case. 

 

Her point is that it is an occupational hazard, something you refuse to even begin to comprehend.

 

Never mind, the logical conclusion is the death of live music, enjoy the taped accompaniment.

[Lindsay]

I comprehend the point being made entirely.  And I disagree with it.  I don’t think that in a civilised society serious and avoidable injuries are acceptable “occupational hazards” any more than asbestos poisoning or emphysema are acceptable. The end does not justify the means.  Wagner himself would be amazed (and probably appalled) by the volume at which his works are now played on modern instruments, disrupting the balance between singers and orchestra.  The 2002 and 2007 Ring cycles were performed with a different orchestral seating arrangement (the violas not in front of the brass) without any noticeable criticism of the playing.  It would have been possible to rehearse and perform the 2012 cycle in the same way without noticeable deterioration in artistic quality and if that had been the case, or if the new arrangement had been abandoned after the first rehearsal where more than one viola player complained, this injury would not have occurred.  So the conclusion you draw is hyperbolic and not in fact logical.  It is entirely possible for the ROH to make adaptations to ensure safety of its employees with minimal (if any) impact on artistic quality.

Edited March 30, 2018 by Lindsay

[MissMonk]

So since this is a ballet forum lets use that as another example. So as ballet dancers, or dancers in general they train hard, dance hard. If one of them hurt themselves and they can no longer do their job do you expect them to sue the Royal Opera House for that? No, you'd expect that they knew that was a risk, that's their choice of profession and that's something that happened. A singer can damage their vocal cords, should they sue the company they work for? I can get carpal tunnel from my job as its all computer data work...should i sue my work? Ok that's going a bit far, they do provide wrist things. I love music and its tragic that he can't do what he loves anymore but...as I've already said, he knew what it entailed. Some professions there is risk.  As someone who is tone deaf now and has severe back problems from lugging a tenor sax around their neck for 10 years and having horrible back and hip problems since, its not like i can just go sue my high school. It was my choice and i kept doing it. Just like this musician.

 

I am sorry that you found offense to my comments of "suck it up" and "lame" however. Though, it is what I feel and as you stated your opinion i respect that, I have said mine.

[meadowblythe]

I think IF the ballet company had not provided suitable rehearsal spaces - no sprung floor, or equipment not properly maintained - then the case of a duty of care may come into play.  A lot of civil law rests on the concept of a "duty of care."  That is why the company you work for provides wrist supports - they need to take reasonable care.

 

Most dancers will end up with a legacy - arthritis, broken joints  .. in the same way many musicians end up with back problems through bad posture (although a good teacher will work on posture issues with their students) and impacted hearing.  However, the key point is whether care has been taken to mitigate these as far as practical.  

[Nicola H]

this sounds like the 'classical' world catching up to something  that Rock and pop   noticed about 20 years ago  and  a hell of a lot of performed  went to 'in ear monitors'  i.e.  in ear  headphones  with properly fitted  earplugs surrounding the  drivers ...

as a Medic  working in the  pit   those of  us with  communication radios  wore  'flight line'  headsets  with  dynamic  noise cancelling mics or  throat mics  and those  not  carrying a radio  wore ear plugs  or  normal ear defenders ...   ditto the  security / safety stewarding on the  crowdline - as  they are the  absolute  worst  areas for  sound pressure - 

[Nicola H]

7 hours ago, MissMonk said:

So since this is a ballet forum lets use that as another example. So as ballet dancers, or dancers in general they train hard, dance hard. If one of them hurt themselves and they can no longer do their job do you expect them to sue the Royal Opera House for that? No, you'd expect that they knew that was a risk, that's their choice of profession and that's something that happened. A singer can damage their vocal cords, should they sue the company they work for? I can get carpal tunnel from my job as its all computer data work...should i sue my work? Ok that's going a bit far, they do provide wrist things. I love music and its tragic that he can't do what he loves anymore but...as I've already said, he knew what it entailed. Some professions there is risk.  As someone who is tone deaf now and has severe back problems from lugging a tenor sax around their neck for 10 years and having horrible back and hip problems since, its not like i can just go sue my high school. It was my choice and i kept doing it. Just like this musician.

 

I am sorry that you found offense to my comments of "suck it up" and "lame" however. Though, it is what I feel and as you stated your opinion i respect that, I have said mine.

were they taught properly ? 
was the  reherasal and performance spaces  appropriately specificed e.g. sprung floors,  floor coverings in proper condition and kept  correctly cleaned ?
was there suitable OH provision in place 
is/ was  there pressure from the Directors / Ballet Master(s) to keep  working  when struggling or when borderline injured , was there a culture within the company of 'pushing on through '  ?  or was there  policy and practice of resting  people  when they needed  without fear of undue repercussions ?

you mentioned  carpal tunnel and typing  -  one ofthe 'safety six  pack'  of  secondary legislation from the late 1990s  is the display screen equipment regulaltions