Worldcrunch: A near fatal act of sabotage at a French opera house wound up in a courtroom last week, after a feud between stage hands offered an unsuspecting audience a moment of true drama six years ago. Let's rewind back to January 28, 2015, at the Théâtre du Capitole, in the southern French city of Toulouse, where Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, a five-hour tale of fated lovers, was building toward a dramatic finale. But on this particular night, the audience had no idea just how dramatic the ending would be.
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This story is quite unlike anything I’ve ever heard from the live entertainment industry before. I have seen and heard my fair share of accidents and things going wrong during shows, but intentionally sabotaging such a dangerous flying object, putting an innocent actor’s life in danger, all to discredit the name of another stagehand? This honestly sounds like something out of the plot of a movie. The actor is very fortunate to have been paying attention to the lowering rock (granted, I would be paying very close attention if a 440 pound rock was slowly lowering towards my face no matter how many times I did it) and to have a quick reaction time when the rock did not stop. It is also very fortunate that the stagehand was paying close attention and was ready at the emergency stop – I do not know if the actor would have made it out either way, but this incident truly goes to show why you must be paying full attention at times like this, even if the exact same thing has gone flawlessly for the last show, the last ten shows, the last hundred shows, or every single time it has been performed. I truly will not be able to wrap my mind around why the accused would do something so dangerous and potentially fatal for the sole purpose of discrediting another stagehand. This incident was seconds away from being premeditated murder.
Reading this article honestly felt as though it were a dramatic TV episode. It is unfathomable to me that a stagehand would ever willingly sabotage the work of another stagehand and risk the life of an actor. It has always been my opinion that the most important responsibility of a stagehand is safety- of themselves, their fellow stagehands, and the entire cast. The fact that any working stagehand would be willing to commit such a dangerous act is absolutely insane to me. It is excellent that the stagehand operating the fly was able to apply the emergency brake just in time, and is definitely a demonstration of why you should never be complacent during a show. While this is obviously an extreme case, you never know what could happen during a live performance and it is critical to always be alert and ready to jump into action if it is necessary.
Having good relationships with your coworkers is imperative, but boy are the stakes high with this one. I’m glad no one got hurt and I hope that there really is some concrete evidence to back up the conviction of this guy (if he really did do it.) This calls into question some other interesting safety measures that weren’t put into place. The article doesn’t go into the specifics about what the rock is made of, but it does mention that it was 440 pounds which makes me wonder if some sort of alternative material should have been used considering there was going to be someone laying under it. Additionally, relying on the computer system as the fail-safe stop mechanism seems like a bad idea for a couple of reasons. Least likely: sabotage, but more likely something like a computer system failure or human error in relation to the computer. It seems like in the ideal setup, there would be a hard physical stop built into the rigging system so there is no way that the actor could have been injured.
Reading this article, I felt like I was watching a telenovela. The lengths that someone would go to destroy a co-worker’s reputation is insane. Someone could have been seriously injured or killed. I’m sure that if the actor playing Tristan was really hurt, Nicolas would have felt a lot worse about tampering with the set in order to satisfy a petty feud. Tristan was very lucky to have been aware enough of his surroundings to be playing dead yet realizing he needed to move out of the way of a 440 lb rock lowing to the ground to crush him. However, I still have the question of whether or not Nicolas S. really did commit the sabotage. I definitely feel the need to read more on the court case as this article doesn’t get that much into detail about what other evidence there is again Nicolas. However, should Nicolas be found not guilty, who would be to blame for the tampering of the fly system? Would anybody be to blame, legally of course?
I watch a lot of true crime documentaries and listen to a lot of podcasts so I am particularly intrigued with this story. I was waiting for a great motive that would drive someone to drop a 200 kilo rock on a tenor but alas.. he wanted to ruin the reputation of a stagehand? What? He would risk the life of the tenor just to ruin someone’s reputation? I find this hard to believe especially because he would have known he has the only person who was there that day who knew the programming. It’s a pretty stupid crime if it’s true. although people have done way crazier stuff for worse reasons. I was a little confused by the article. Has be yet to be convicted? I don’t know why I was surprised by this story. You always here stories of rigging accidents in the theaters so it’s no wonder that theaters are a great place for deaths to take place in TV and movies. I just have never heard of things like this actually happing.
Well, first of all: mad props to Tristan's actor for making that narrow escape. Good on him for being constantly vigilant (as he should be, which has been said time and time again by others). A 200 kilo rock less than a meter away from one's face? Absolutely terrifying. Though this does prompt me to wonder why this rock was so heavy. The article makes it sound like an actual rock, so why couldn't there have been a prop built from lighter or softer materials? Even in the name of realism, this seems like a pretty big risk to take just in case of incidents like the one described or human error, computer malfunction, etc. Also with regard to Nicolas, it really seems like a disproportionate act in relation to the motive behind it. Almost committing murder just to discredit a rival while (apparently) being the only person who could possibly behind such a crime? Maybe not the smartest move.
I can’t believe something like this can actually happen in real life! Does no one check the cues for the rock before the show? For something that seems so dangerous, one would think every ounce of care would be taken to make sure exactly what did happen would not happen. No one checks every lightcue or sound cue, but those aren't life threatening. I’m just curious to know what their protocol was for the safety checks surrounding this rock. I’m also wondering, if it was someone’s responsibility to check it before the performance, if some of the guilt from this incident falls on them. Surely no one could have expected that there would be a deliberate sabotage, but the stakes are so high! I’m also curious as to why the rock had to be so heavy. Surely in a huge opera house the rock must be extremely far from the audience and they wouldn't be able to see details anyway. So what was the point of making it so damn heavy? Hopefully I don’t wrong anyone so drastically in my career that someone feels the need to kill a person to slander my name.
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