The orchestra’s horns were so loud they wrecked the violist’s hearing — & his career!
Chris Goldscheider had an enviable career as an orchestral musician. A master of the viola, he performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony orchestras. He shared the stage with opera legend Luciano Pavarotti. He even played alongside Kylie Minogue on MTV.
Goldscheider, 45, also spent more than a decade with the prestigious orchestra of the Royal Opera House in London, a coveted destination for top classical musicians, where he rose to No. 6 viola.
But in the summer of 2012, during a roaring rehearsal of Richard Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” a blast from the orchestra’s 18-member brass section left him with devastating and permanent hearing loss that caused vertigo, nausea and intense pain, he said. By 2014, the effects of the “acoustic shock” were so bad he was forced to retire.
On Wednesday, in a landmark case with far-reaching consequences for the British music industry, Britain’s High Court of Justice ruled that the Royal Opera House was liable for his injury.
Justice Nicola Davies concluded in an 83-page opinion that the opera house had violated regulations requiring it to protect musicians from dangerous noise levels. A damage assessment is forthcoming. Goldscheider’s lawsuit, filed in 2016, alleged the opera house violated a 2005 law regulating noise levels at work and sought 750,000 pounds ($1.05 million) in lost earnings alone.
The ruling marks a major shift in the way British courts treat musician safety in the workplace and the first time the High Court has recognized “acoustic shock” as an occupational hazard eligible for damages.
“The Music Business has considered itself exempt from the same regulatory requirements as all other sectors because of the artistic nature of its output,” Goldscheider’s solicitor Chris Fry said in a statement. “This in our view has always been a dismissive view from an industry which creates and sells ‘noise’ as a product.”
The Royal Opera House contended that its own medical experts had concluded that Goldscheider’s hearing damage couldn’t have been caused by a single exposure to loud music. In a statement to the BBC, the opera house said it was “surprised and disappointed” by the ruling, adding that it had led the industry in its efforts to protect musicians from dangerously loud sound.
“We do not believe that the Noise Regulations can be applied in an artistic institution in the same manner as in a factory, not least because in the case of the Royal Opera House, sound is not a by-product of an industrial process but is an essential part of the product itself,” the statement read. “This has been a complex case and we will consider carefully whether to appeal the judgment.”
In summer 2012, Goldscheider signed up to perform Wagner’s celebrated Ring Cycle, an epic operatic drama known for its complex arrangements, wild story lines and thunderous horn swells. At a Sept. 1 rehearsal, the conductor situated him and the other viola players in front of a brass section — four trumpets, four trombones, nine French horns and one tuba, according to the ruling.
They spent the afternoon in the cramped orchestra pit practicing “Die Walküre.” The composition features the explosive “Ride of the Valkyries” section, which most people will recognize as the battle cry blared from U.S. helicopters during the famous village attack scene in the Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now” (“Put on psy-war-op, make it loud,” Robert Duvall’s character utters.)
The piece is so loud that Britain’s automobile association once listed it as “the No. 1 tune not to play while driving” based on research showing “loud music can cause accidents.”
Goldscheider was sitting in “direct line of fire” of the brass section and, in particular, the principal trumpet, according to the ruling. Over the course of several hours, the sound from the horns exceeded 91 decibels on average — high enough to cause hearing loss — and at its loudest moments peaked at more than 137 decibels, as loud as a jet engine at 100 feet.
Goldscheider was wearing custom ear plugs provided by the opera house, but they weren’t enough, he alleged. As a professional musician, he was accustomed to loud noise. But, as the judge wrote in her ruling, “the sensation from so many brass instruments playing directly behind him, in a confined area, at the same time at different frequencies and volumes, created a wall of sound which was completely different to anything he had previously experienced.”
“It was excruciatingly loud and painful,” Davies continued. “The claimant felt weird, overwhelmed and confused but finished the session.”
Soon after, Goldscheider began to experience dizziness and pain in his ears. It worsened over the following days and eventually gave way to nausea and vertigo. He returned to work but often found it impossible to play. When the orchestra got going, his symptoms would worsen.
“He would feel terribly nauseous, extremely unwell from the pain in his right hear, he felt dizzy and found it difficult to walk,” according to the court’s ruling. Even practicing on his own became unbearable.
He left the Royal Opera House in 2014. He says his hearing is now so sensitive that he moved his family to the country and avoids restaurants and other loud places. He told the BBC that he has been unable to listen to his son, a talented young French horn player.
“With this condition if you are exposed to normal sounds, unfortunately they become incredibly painful,” he said. “I suppose the nearest analogy is if you imagine for a normal person to walk on normal ground and then you imagine walking barefoot on glass.”
His lawsuit claimed he suffered “acoustic shock,” which is described as a physiological response to a sudden intensely loud noise that can cause a combination of symptoms ranging from tinnitus to a burning sensation in the ear to a loss of balance. It was only recently recognized as a clinical condition, with the first cases reported in the early- and mid-2000s among call center operators.
The Royal Opera House’s expert dismissed the concept of “acoustic shock,” arguing instead that Goldscheider had developed Meniere’s disease, an inner-ear disease marked by bouts of vertigo, during the 2012 rehearsal.
The judge was unconvinced.
“I regard the defendant’s contention that Meniere’s disease developed at the rehearsal as stretching the concept of coincidence too far,” she wrote. “The level of noise recorded during the afternoon, in particular the peak levels, would be consistent with those reported in the medical literature as causing acoustic shock.”
The opera house said it went great lengths to shield musicians from loud noises, conducting risk assessments, erecting sound baffles and carefully arranging the different musicians to limit the dangers while delivering the best sound to the audience. A balance had to be struck between artistic considerations and the safety of musicians, it said.
But the judge found the opera house’s case lacking.
“The defendant has advanced no evidence that artistic values of productions of its operas, specifically those in the Ring Cycle, would in 2012 or now be reduced by steps taken to eliminate or reduce noise exposure from that created by the configuration of musicians in amongst whom the claimant was rehearsing,” she wrote.
“The reliance upon ‘artistic value’ implies that statutory health and safety requirements must cede to the needs and wishes of the artistic output of the opera company, its managers and conductors. Such a stance is unacceptable, musicians are entitled to the protection of the law as is any other worker.”
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