www.broadwayworld.com: More than a decade after a serious onstage accident ended her career, veteran mezzo-soprano Wendy White has settled her lawsuit against the Metropolitan Opera, reports the New York Times. Ms. White was injured during a December 2011 performance of Faust when a platform on the Met stage collapsed, causing her to fall eight feet and sustain injuries that ended her singing career.
3 comments:
While incidents in any industry (and especially live entertainment where so many factors are at play) are not completely preventable, we must do everything we can to limit the risks. However, no amount of preparation, safety precautions, and walkthroughs can prevent every risk from existing and make it so nothing goes wrong. Every time something goes wrong at this scaleand especially when things go wrong during a performance, it immediately becomes very noticeable to a large group of people in the audience and can be very alarming. People can very quickly start to think that the theater isn’t “safe” and it needs to be fixed when in reality, even with the most robust safety procedures, things like this do happen. I do hope though that the Met learned from this and all other incidents in order to minimize the chance of future incidents like this happening and I am glad that the person injured finally got compensation.
This article about Wendy White’s lawsuit against the Met is really heartbreaking. It’s so upsetting to hear how her career ended, and it’s so disheartening to hear how long the legal battle was prolonged. The fight over whether she was an employee or an independent contractor shows how complicated things can get with artists' rights. It’s wild that lawmakers even had to step in to allow her to continue the case. I had never heard Wendy White's music prior to this article; however, she was such a talented singer, and it's mind-boggling to me that someone who was a renowned Met performer had to go through something like this for over two decades. While yes, it’s good that the Met finally settled in this legal battle, it's frustrating that the details are confidential—it would be nice to know how they plan to prevent something like this from happening again. It’s also interesting how rare onstage accidents are, though they clearly still pose serious risks.
As a WWE fan, it is always both fascinating and infuriating to me when companies bounce between the titles of employee and contractor as it benefits them. This lawsuit, while extremely unfortunate, displays a positive, though delayed, conclusion in the ongoing battle of performer compensation in the entertainment industry. Career-ending injuries are unfortunately far from uncommon at every level of entertainment, and they are rarely properly compensated. Whether they be due to negligence, malicious intent, or just freak accidents, performers deserve compensation and, when possible, continued job security after accidents, just like employees in other industries.
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